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LETTERS 



S L A Y E R Y, 



ADDRESSED TO THE 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN OF AMERICA; 



SnOWIXG ITS 



|lle§aiiti) iii all %pB m^n |Iiittons 



ITS 



DESTRUCTIVE WAR UPON SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT, 
MORALS AND RELIGION. 



•z 



By 0. S. FREEMAN. 



" Whatever dishonors human nature, dishonors the policy of a government 
that permits it."— Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. 



.^^ 



hS 



BOSTON 






BELA MARSH, 15 FRANKLIN STRETT 

1855. 



[From the Christian Freeman.] 
It has no waste words. Every family in the United 
States should read it ; and all professional men, and men 
taking an active interest in the subject, should possess it 
as a l)ook of reference. 

[From the South Boston Gazette.] 
This is a remarkable pamphlet. It is remarkable for 
the condeii.-^ation of a mass of truths in a small compass, 
which might reasonably be spread over a much larger 
space. Malf.7/m in parvo might approfiriately be stamped 
upon its title-}>age. Friends of the rights of man, and be- 
lievers in the Higher-law doctrine, should read this pam- 
phlet, and give it an extensive circulation. 

I From tlie Cambridge Chronicle.] 
The Jwork deserves to be read by all who are interested 
in a subject of such vital importance. 

[From Zioii's Heraid and .Journal.] 

This pamphlet is elaborately written, and must have 
cost its wiiter immense pains. AYe commend it to the 
attention nt' pro-slavery men both in church and state. 
[From the New England Spiritualist.] 

The work displays gieat erudition and vast research ; its 
style, is exceedingly condensed, and it will form an armory 
ot weapons for the use of all wno are battling for human 
freedom, whether physical, mentul, or spiritual. 

I From tiie Li'nerator. | 

It eulbodic^^ much historical intelligence on the subject 
of slavery, a strong array of authorities against the folly 
and wickedness of attempting through legislation and com- 
pacts to nullily the 'higher law,' and a lucid argument to 
show that the ]»ro-slavery spirit of tlie day is identical with 
ancient toryism. in its impudent assumptions, its method 
of reasoning, and its denial of human (Mjuality. It indi- 
cates laborious research, and a diligent examination of the 
whole subject. We commend it to the attention of all. 

[From Hon. <ierrit Smith, to the Auth<)r.] 
Sir : — " I have this moment finished reading your ' Let- 
ters on Slavery.' It is the best book I ever saw in proof 
of the impossibility of legaliza)g slavery. The friends of 
freedom and of true civil government owe you a great 
debt." 



PREFACE. 

The original plan of the author was the preparation of a 
larger work than the present, on the subject-matter in 
hand. The vast accumulation of materials, after a long 
course of investigation, convinced him that that would be 
very cumbersome, and satisfy but a few. The state of the 
public mind demanded something that any man could buy 
and read of an evening. And yet, the subject demanded 
that critical minds should be supplied with sufficient au- 
thorities on the points handled. Not only the common 
reader, then, was to be supplied, but lawyers, clergymen, 
statesmen, politicians, and reformers. 

To effect this, the author has reduced a work of more 
than one thousand pages to the present form, which every 
man, however poor, can purchase, and which the states- 
man may carry in his pocket. 

This volume, then, is for the whole people, though ad- 
dressed as letters to a particular class. The author has 
chosen this method — that of letters addressed to pro-slave- 
ry men — for reasons which will appear obvious to the 
reader as ho passes along. 

The time has come when every lover of his country and 
of humanity should understand the true basis of civil asso- 
ciation and government. He should know what slavery 
has done, and is doing, by an inevitable law of nature, to 
destroy free institutions, and convert society into a chaos. 



IV PREFACE. 

He sliould be able to see at a glance the tendency of every 
measure of government that is suicidal to the State. His 
soul should be aroused by the example of past times ; his mind 
fortified with those absolute principles of right which the 
Almighty has developed in the history of all nations. And, 
feeling the ground of righteous law to be indeed the rock 
of eternal ages, he should stand upon that, fearless and firm, 
making no compromise with wrong ; but openly, honorably, 
fearlessly, and with well-directed power, strike down the 
evils that make war upon the " rights of human nature." 

To furnish every American — every man, indeed, who 
cares for the right — with a good armory and a well-stored 
magazine, accumulated from the good and great of all na- 
tions and ages, that every one may choose what best fits 
him in the great contest upon which we have now entered, 
is the purpose of this volume. 

The author has endeavored to furnish in marginal refer- 
ences all that the most inquisitive could desire, or the 
greatest sticklers for authority could wish. Errors may 
have crept into this department, in the typographical exe- 
cution, which future editions will correct. The true critic 
will have charity. 



LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 



LETTER I. 

Man is the same in every age, in every clime. He may 
differ in certain phenomenal respects, under the physical 
influences of locality, and the modifying phiy of native in- 
stitutions; yet, in no respect, are the fundamental principles 
which constitute him man, altered or annuled. All that he 
has been, all that he is, all that he can be, lie infolded as 
capacity, as capability, as potential power, as much in one 
man as in another. Not that all are equal poets, or phi- 
losophers, or mechanics. But all possess the essential ele- 
ments of humoMiy, so that no one can be declared, a priori. 
incapable of any particular human development. One 
specimen of a man among the Africans is enough to prove 
the title of his race to manhood ; otherwise idiots and fools 
in other races might overbalance the evidence in their 
favor. 

All that any member of humanity may be, as a man, he 
has the right to become. All that the most favorable cir- 
cumstances can aid him in becoming' as a man, he has the 
rights as a man, to seek and appropriate, providing he 
pushes no of uelse from his equal right. To suppose God 
has created afty rational capacity, without giving the right 
of its proper development, is equivalent to the suppositicn 
there is no God. There is no God who is not consistent WxtL 
himself. You must either deny that Jehovah has created 
those you enslave, men, or you must allow them the rights 
of men, else you deny the supreme right of Divinity to 
command you to deal justly. Your position involves athe- 
ism — a crime against reason, justice, JDivinity. 
1* 



O LETTERS TO 

All that is righteous within reach of any human being, 
by virtue of .power conferred by the Almighty, any man 
has a Divine charter of rights for attaining, without asking 
consent of any human corporation. Nor has any body of 
men, be they King, Lords and Commons, or President, 
Congress, or the nation, the right, or authority to push him 
aside, much less to make him a slave. His Divine title 
holds good against all the powers of earth and hell. Their 
attempt to defeat him is war de facto against Eternal Jus- 
tice. Nor is this all. The war against the just right of 
one man is waged against the equal right of all. Claim 
the right to make a slave of one man, you deny your own 
right to freedom. If you may make a beast of him, he 
may make a beast of you. In making a beast of him you 
make a beast of yourself. 

Man was made before society. Society can have no 
right that man has not allowed it. He cannot delegate to 
society what he has no right to allow to himself. He lias no 
right to enslave another ; society can have no such right ; 
society cannot guarantee a right that is wrong. The rights 
of society are the aggregation of individual rights. Every 
man may protect the just claims of himself and his brother. 
Society has the right to protect the just claims of all. 
Nay, further : Men associate and organize for rational pur- 
poses. The principal purpose, the grand aim, is protection 
of human rights. Power is conferred upon government for 
this sole purpose. No man enters society to be a slave, 
but that he may have his just claims protected, by the su- 
preme power of it, in case any member, or body of its 
members, attempt to rob him. Can the supreme power 
side with the robbers ? Not by any riyht it possesses ; not 
without opposing its own right of authority. ts authority 
was given to do justice, and that alone. To side with the 
aggressive power, with the robber, the oppressor, is abro- 
gation of its authority, an abandonment of government, an 
assumption of despotism. From a protector of human 
rights it becomes their sworn enemy. It turns its sword 
upon society and hews it in pieces. 

Justice existed before the forvis of government. It is 
.the law of one man, the law of every man, the law of 



ike govCTiuftents. sad scci^nemiiieiiis mie ifar scistitj b j aa- 
ifcifrfty of the . Th^ ls hgc zrnrermzLtsic 

£sir for mas. that is oisfe as gjaod. &r ine aa^ S}r anii&or. 

Cr " rt is 

¥j - - - _ - ^ jftTHia 

if' any- laaa,'^ it is "-a taror to erz? -ioers^"' hoc ta ^ tkase 

■EL : :__^J I JLOBSaB. 

senses, but by its "j^-e -itiinK cc fcacws no liifersBee 

l^ .' " . - ^ 

_ _ _ ^ -_ _: :-3 mii 

: isaes Iiave- always - : i chfi -3p 



_:5v iave ieaieii Z!i^v hanre 



Where is tke aaEMa wiiose buscary : gfiaT tiiac fts 

finudaixLaitai law is ■ - ' jz 

ksw Rodees db[& aatiozE^ ss ux lii7~ is t^ 

■■ML For w&fseiner ia^ its 

lutve b«eiE at- -iniples 

soctetj. Tker toilowed cae >" imads. aectLeti wici sofi 

TOO stole 
- - - ^ :^ce of difi 

fK^'oets «t' bjs tQiIs. Wiiea men a^seiiiDied m lilies, ihn 
^bSbi ' - ^ II m — ptoteetrr. - -« -jji ia^ 

■aa -.':a die ^oiL? .^:n. rf^blB. 

S<K was :se iiL«:aicer5 diia.bed into : - .c sot- 

•cmffient ^ ^ " fered to pr:ce'- 

nfebery. - -'in llis jt:jj.:zi:u- 

kii birtiu V : : :s kjpoerisT. ami wiicse 



8 LETTERS TO 

government being impossible, they can only expect a little 
right and a great deal of wrong. But, say they, "As we 
are the friends of right, we will very cheerfully aid the 
dear people as well as circumstances will allow." 
" We are pi'octical men," say these demagog-ues ; " we do, 
while others think, and dream, and philosophise." Yes, 
gentlemen, you do, for ever do for yourselves, while the 
dear people delegate you to act for them. They send you 
to restore right, to root up the poisonous weeds of the civil 
garden. You return to them, having plucked the flowers 
for the adornment of your own persons. 

We have boasted that the American governments are 
founded upon principles new to the world. It has become 
a fashionable saying with some that the good whig fathers 
were the first who said, ^'- oilmen are horn free and equal ;^'' 
as if mankind had lived thousands of years in ignorance of 
a self evident principle of their own natui*e. The truth is, 
it was known and declared more than a thousand years be- 
fore America was dreamed of by its discoverer. Nor is 
this all. The same fundamental principles of the Ameri- 
can constitutions were ever recognized as the only legiti- 
mate principles of government. We have only a variation 
of form. While the form has changed in every age, the 
principles of society have ever been permanent. 

It would be an easy, and, withal, a profitable task, to 
show the exact likeness — the identity of the primary prin- 
ciples — of American state constitutions with those of all 
nations. Easy, I say, in respect to the fact, aside from 
the labor of collecting the materials necessary to its elu- 
cidation. The evidence on this head demonstrates that 
slavery cannot, by any possibility, be recognized by legiti- 
mate, but only by a bastard government, a system of tyr- 
anny. Let us try this in a small way, for I cannot expa- 
tiate at large. 

Seneca atfirms that " the strength which individual man 
wants without society, he finds when united with his fellows 
as equals.''^ Upon what principle could slavery enter into 
such a social compact ? Upon what principle could any 

* 1 Senec. de Benef., 1. 4. c. 18. 



FBOSLATERT ME^. 9 

member claim that superiority •which woald entitle him to 
be the arbitrary lord of others ? In what way could he 
appropriate the fniits of any other's labors, without his 
consent, and without a fair equivalent, to say nothing of 
making his brother a chattel ? Yet you. sirs, contciid thai 
the slaves of America stre " member? of society,'' and, in 
the same breath, that the members of society, in respect to 
their rights, are not equal ; you therefore oppose the foi>- 
damental principles of legitimate society, and introduce z 
l^astard system, that will allow of lordship, kingship, mas- 
tership, slavery. 

Even Aristotle, though a Grecian aristocrat, a despiser 
of the humanity of all other nations as barbarous, fit only 
to be enslaved by the lordly Greeks, yet acknowledged 
that the law of human equality was the only legitimate ba- 
sis of society, rendering slavery unjust and inadmissable. 
" It is neither for the good, nor is it just," says he, •' see- 
ing all men are by Tiature alike and equal, that one should 
be lord and master over others where there is no law. nor 
is it for the public good, nor just that one man should be 
a law to the rest, where there are laws ; nor that any one. 
liiough a good man, should be lord over other good men, 
nor a bad man over bad men,''*= 

Could the fundamental principle of every &ee American 
constitution be more clearly ez '\. It was not for the 

good of Greece that her auth'i . .Ijwai a large portion 

of the community to be excluded from her protection, and, 
contrary to the law of social organization, be held the ab- 
solute slaves of a privileged order. This was allowing a 
state of war de jure in the body politic, wtd:-h could not be 
prevented firom becoming a war de facto to the destruction 
of the commonwealth. It was allowing zs paramount the 
partial and unjust claims of a select class in a commu- 
nity that c-ould have no stability, no existence, in fact, 
without the actual, the decided recognition of that uniyer- 
sal law, that guarantees to all men equal rights and denies 
to any, counter claims. It was allowing pirates and rob- 
bers a licen,5e to trample upon those fandamenral and 



Pol., lib. 3. See Miltoa's Defence of th.e People of Englini. 



10 LETTERS TO 

eternal principles, the sacred regard of which, alone, on the 
part of government, preserves society from becoming the 
certain prey of impious men. It vras breaking down the 
only guards and fences which the Almighty has placed 
around freedom, and allowing the wolves and bears of so- 
ciety to enter and devour the weak and the defenceless. It 
was casting the social superstructure from the immoviible 
rock of absolute justice, and founding it upon the quick- 
sands of passion and lust — the sensuous power of lawless 
tyrants. It was entering into a war de jure et de factp 
against the ordinances of nature and the judgment of 
heaven, and was certain to be rigorously punished with 
the total ruin of the state. 

The best minds and hearts of Greece saw and felt this ; 
and they raised their voice against slavery. They denied 
the justice of the claim of any, upon the involuntary and 
unrequited services of unfortunate men. " Equal law was 
the decree of the gods. Jove created none to tyrannize 
over others. All men had descended from the gods with 
the same natures, the same liberties, the same rights. They 
had sent heroes to exterminate tyrants and monsters who 
preyed upon human society." They delighted in the lib- 
erty of mankind : they had given freedom as a sacred 
birth-right of all — had written it upon the soul of the 
poorest and the weakest as a divine diploma which no ty- 
rants could efface.^ " Tyranny," said Aristotle, <' is 
against the law of nature."! Euripides, in his play called 
" The Suppliant," introduces Theseus, King of Athens, as 
saying, " I have advanced the people themselves into the 
throne, having freed the city from slavery, and admitted 
the people to a share in the government, by giving them an 
equal right of suffrage. ""X 

So slavery was declared to be contrary to the Grecian 
constitution, by some of the most eminent among the 
Greeks.^ Nor could it be regarded by Socrates in any 

* Arist. Tol., 1. 1, c. 3.— Plato. De Leg., ]. 9, p. G60.— Cudworth, b. 
1, c. 5.— Plato in his Eighth Epist. — Isocrat. Orat. de Permutat. 
t Pol., 1. 3, c. 12. 

\ As quoted by Milton, in his Defence of the People of England. 
k Thucyd., I. 4. c 80. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 11 

other light than as a system of robbery.^ It was at war 
with society. It could not be sustained without force, 
contrary to right. It was acknowledged that before men 
made war upon one another shwery had no existence ; that, 
rightfully, every man was by nature free, and had a right 
to defend his freedom against all force to subject him to 
bondage.! Indeed, this was honorable, said the Greeks ; 
" it is noble," said Cjtus, " to fight, in order not to be 
made a slave."t Nor can there be found a singrle dissent- 
ing voice among the best Greek authors on this point. 

Yet it was held the moment a man was conquered by 
another he lost his title to manhood and became the abso- 
lute slave of the conqueror. It mattered not how distin- 
guished the captive had been, nor how honorable. The 
slavery of the captive was the reward of valor, prowess, 
and strategem — thus wholly excluding the law of absolute 
right, the law of society. Force without law begat slave- 
ry, and only force without law could sustain it. But force 
without law was at irreconcilable warfare with the rights 
of mankind and the principles of society. Therefore, slav- 
ery could never be incorporated into society. It could 
only be introduced as its enomy. It could only be at- 
tached to society as a sinking weight that would drao- it 
under the waves. The captive, the slave, was the natural 
enemy of his oppressor, and of all who took sides with the 
tyrant against him. Greece was in almost a constant state 
of civil warfare after the establishment of slavery. The 
principles of the constitution were disregarded. One state 
made war upon another as a band of robbers. Greek en- 
slaved Greek. Justice and equity fled. Policy and 
stratagem, bribery and corruption, force and slavery, an- 
archy and dissolution, took the place of humanity, justice, 
virtue, unity, and peace. 



* Xen. Mem., 1. 4, c. 2. 

t Xen. Cyrop., 1. 3, § 2. 

i Ibid. '• Ai the second period the Athenian citizens were 21,000," 
" while the slaves numbered 400,000." [Mitford, vol. 1, pp. 354, 355.] 
Who cm wonder that Greece fell. 

Tradition, in the age of Herodotus, presei^ved the memory of a time 
when slavery was unknown in Gre^ce. Herodot , 1. 6, p 137 Sparta, 
as a band of robbers, made war upon Helos, and reductd all tiie people 
to perpetual slavery. 



12 LETTERS TO 

Yet you, sirs, advocate this as a worthy example for 
America to follow. You would have us all slaveholders. 
You would have us turn robbers, pirates, tyrants. You 
would drive justice from the laud, liberty from the state, 
religion from the temple, and God from our souls. An- 
tiquity enroled Hercules amongst the gods, because he 
punished Busiris, Diomedes, and other tyrants — the pests 
of mankind and monsters of the world. ^ '• We have all 
our beast within us," .said Aristotle,! '• and whoever is gov- 
erne<i by a man without justice and law, is governed by a 
man and by a beast.'' 

It was seen by Plato that slavery segregated and de- 
stroyed Grecian society. It was partial to the claims of 
injustice as right ;% favored the few in the robbery of the 
many ; destroyed the honor of free labor ; drove the virtue 
of humanity out of the hearts of the people ; made them 
venal, sensuous, fraudulent ; while it exalted the power of 
unprincipled slaveholders, made them over-reaching, proud, 
domineering, the sworn enemies of society, and the found- 
ers of the most despicable of all tyrannies — an oligarchal 
despotism in the name of democracy. 

Yet you point to the ancients, and say, •' Slavery always 
existed. It was recognized in the republics of Greece." 
Ah, yes ! Always recognized by tyrants, and by those 
whom slavery had so much degraded as to render unfit and 
despicable as the interpreters of law. Remember, sirs, 
who trampled upon the liberties of Greece ; who were left 
to wander amid her ruins ; whose careless feet kicked the 
bleached skulls of tyrants and slavemasters. Go, sirs, 
and interrogate those classic remains ! Call up the spirits 
of the ancient dead I Ask, why these solemn ruins ? Why 
this lonely desolation ? Why has fled society, and left the 
owl and the bat, the serpent and the wolf, to people the 
palaces and temples of the classic land ? From out the 
depth of old ruins shall come the answer, These are the 
works of masters and of slaves. 

There \< but one foundation for society, that is, absolute 



* Judsrr.en- of Whole Kiagdom.? and Nations, par. 32. 
t PoL, 1 3, c. 11. 
t Plato de Leg., 1. 9. 



right — as solid and fmmoT-/ ' ^ - -^— •--- ~^ -^ t - - -- --- - -^ 

for all hf^-ll can't ^•rsvail a_ . rr 

fo': '" Drefer m . •:- 

the or. 

of their owri Slavery. To — moa 

to ■'"' "-^ "1 are not the fiiii-^_^-^:^± j_- -- is 

in. Yet ynrr. «ir«. are forced " 

seLve* ia that m: ama, of ei" j that 

society has im- — — ^^ , - - - . . .-. .^.^ 

L3 equal law c : _ . ~- 

emment and reguiatioa or meiLa iives m : ' ;■ one 

another as brethren, or yon musty in j--' • ^ — . i 

slavery, a'linit that yon have tLLmeii r . :i 

Justice, and have joined the enemy of aii manid- 
jec"' "" :: '/^^anity to beastly servitude. Ti — -...in. 

is -. i in the extreme. Open reb-;.. . •: -he 

govermiien: of Heaven is more than any ham . -• 

d&c Christian light, would be willing to dr.— .-. j.':«i 
mast then, c-onfess yotirselves hung npon the other horn. 
YotL mtist confess that jou wholly deny that the Almighty 
is infinitely just, and has establishes! '•: -• ■ - ^ -' :-cnial 
mle of society : that, there being no - r' .lal 

reguLition of the c-ondact of men in respect to e. ?. 

there is no wrong in one in:'ii robbing and >-_:-^-.:j.g 
another. 

This was the position which the pre- :i 

Greece were force^i to take.* For it was _ _- . ^ .^e 

sight of the Grecians to declare war with :eme 

Deity as it wotild be now. It was e • - and 

robbers then, as now, to create donbt : _..r .. inany 

that the eternal jtLstic-e was the imm . ir of society. 

It was ' J to the seli nien. 

to sop !-^:. ....... .^. -...:..i and drow^^ :_-. .--.. .: con- 

seienc-e, and uDon the rains of fiith in right boild a system 
of rubber" ' '^m. 

These Lt. _ : . _. ^sts who snpportai slavery said, as 



an 
so. 



14 LETTERS TO 

you sa}^, " Slavery has always existed somev/liere ; nothing 
is that the gods have not created ; therefore slavery is a 
divine institution." So every open robber and pirate reas- 
oned. The filthy debauchee used the same arguments. 

Thus the same arguments you are forced to use in sup- 
port of slavery and robbery, the corrupting sophists of 
Greece resorted to in justification, not only of slavery, but 
of all the crimes in the calendar. Is it a wonder, then 
that Greece fell ? Once destroy faith in the principle by 
which one criminal action is made to be criminal, and you 
have mined away the whole foundation of moral rectitude. 
Then you may enact that virtue itself shall be a crime. 



PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 15 



LETTEE II. 

What nation was ever destroyed by the equity and jus- 
tice of its laws ? What nation of antiquity, whose ruins 
remain to tell the tale of long-gone woes, fell not by the 
hands of both tyrants and slaves ? 

There was a time when ancient Rome recognized the 
equality of all men in her fundamental principles of social 
compact. Had she held by these, and maintained them by 
rigid virtue — even had the penalties been as severe as they 
are said to have been — Rome would have remained firm 
and unshaken thi-ough all the fierce onsets of barbar- 
ous tribes. But a few ambitious men blew the trump 
of conquest, marshaled the spirits of the people from peace- 
ful labors into freebooting bands, and on they rushed upon 
the nations. The conqueror returned with spoils, with long 
processions of miserable captives, and these were sold into 
perpetual bondage. Every new conquest crowded the 
markets with thousands of slaves. So numerous at one 
time had they become, that men were sold for less than a 
dollar per head. 

It is awful as well as instructive to mark the results of 
this horrid system of barbarity — to observe how the Al- 
mighty Judge, by an inevitable law, turned the whole 
weight of this curse, the Romans were heaping upon 
wretched foreigners, upon their own heads. As the slaves 
increased, free labor was destroyed and became a disgrace. 
Every Roman citizen who had the means, purchased the 
right of becoming a tyrant by purchasing a slave. Effemi- 
nacy seized upon the once virtuous and industrious work- 
ers. Those who had been most successful in foreign rob- 
bery, and were the most artful, now commenced a system 
of robbery at home. The wealthier citizens secured a su- 
premacy of power. The great body of the citizens who 
had cultivated their own plots of ground were unable to 



16 LETTERS TO 

bear up under the burthen of playing gentlemen and hav- 
ing their small patches cultivated by slaves. What every 
man had once effected by his own industry, it now required 
two or three slaves to effect. To work himself was to 
place himself in the condition of a slave. For honor he 
was therefore obliged to sell both his lands and his slaves, 
which the rich manao;ed to obtain for a son^. As the 
poorer citizen turned hiS' energies to other sources for a 
livelihood where there was less disgrace, alas ! he was soon 
met with the same dread images of slavery and death. 
Slaves ! slaves ! ! slaves ! ! ! he saw everywhere, and 
dreaded everywhere. Every where and every moment they 
haunted his visions. They were always devouring the last 
crumbs of his famishing children. Thousands of these 
once industrious citizens became beo;2;ared : thousands be- 

DO -^ 

came petty criminals of all shades. There was no honor- 
able calling but in the army or in civil offices, and these 
were controled by the wealthy nabobs. The beggared Ro- 
man still boasted of his freedom, though robbed of all but 
the name. Equality was destroyed, and liberty had be- 
come a mockery. 

What a tale does Tacitus tell in these few lines : "After 
the conquest of Asia the whole state of our affairs was 
turned upside down ; nothing of the ancient integrity of our 
fathers was left amongst us ; all men cast away that former 
equality which had been observed."* And this he repeats 
with mournful emphasis. Montesquieu, who devoted his 
life to the study of the laws of all nations, and a great por- 
tion of it to the study of the Roman system, attributes the 
downfall of the Republic to the influence of slavery ;t and, 
in his learned work on the Spirit of Laws, with his eyes 
upon sad examples of slavery in the Grecian and Roman 
Republics, he says : "In democracies, where they are all 
upon an equality^ # # -^ slavery is contrary to the spirit of 
the constitution; it only contributes to give a power and 
luxury to [some of] the citizens which they ought not to 
have."| And again, alluding directly to the system of 

* Tacit. Ann., lib. 3. 

t See Montesquieu's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

t Spirit of Laws, b. 15, c. 1. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 17 

Roman .iiespotism wliicli came to exist in consequence of 
the slavery, and which was exercised in the name of law 
and order, as you now carry it out in the Republic of 
America, he says : " No tyranny can have a severer effect 
than that which is exercised under the appearance of laws 
and with the phiusible colors of justice."^ Phato had 
made almost the same expression in respect to the tyranni- 
cal course of civil power in the name of law and order. 
" The most complete injustice," said he, " is to seem just, 
not being &o."t It is hence that Montesquieu, speaking of 
the " law" or act *' of slavery," says, "J? is contrary to the 
fundamental principle of all societies. ^^X 

Home, like Greece, violated the great social law in al- 
lowing slavery. She made war upon the spirit of her own 
constitution as a republic — as a democracy. The citizens 
became petty tyrants. Wealth seized the supreme control. 
Free labor was annihilated. The whole nation became en- 
slaved. And when all had become mendicant freemen, 
bloated tyrants, and miserable slaves, Caesar found no ob- 
structions in establishing a despot's throne. " The coun- 
try," says Plutarch, " swarmed with a numerous company 
of barbarous slaves, whom the rich men employed in culti- 
vating their ground which they had acquired by dispossess- 
ing the citizens." This infamous double robber crushed 
the hearts of the citizens. Poor and despised, they re- 
fused to enlist in the armies to defend their robbers and 
themselves ; " nor did they," says Plutarch, " take any 
care of the education of their children." Thus ignorance, 
imbecility, vagabondism, loathsome vice, and universal 
ruin, followed in the train of Roman slavery. Yet you 
point to the Romans in justification of this mother of deso- 
lation — refer to it as a blessing to be fostered by the Re- 
public of America. If you had gone to Polybius, he vv'ould 
have told you that " none but unprincipled and beastly 
men in society assume the mastery over their fellows, as it 
is among bulls, bears, and cocks. "'i* Had you gone to 



* Montesquieu's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 14. 

t Repub., 1. 2. 

f Spirit of Laws, b. 15, cli. 2. 

§ Tolj'b., lib. 4. 

2* 



18 LETTERS TO 

Cicero, and the most eminent of the Roman lawyers, they 
would have told you that slavery was at war with the fun- 
damental principles of the Roman nation and the grand 
" law of nature, by which all men are horn freeT They 
would have told you that the " Law of Nature," which is 
" the law of all nations, forbids one man to pursue his ad- 
vantage at the expense of another.''"^ And Cicero would 
have told you in particular, heathen as you may call him, 
that this " law of nature " — this fundamental principle of 
all societies of men as well as of every individual man — " is 
universally binding upon all men ;" that you are " not al- 
lowed to retrench it in any part, nor to alter it, much less 
to abolish it ;" that it was " obligatory upon Rome and 
upon Athens :" that it " is the same to-day, tomorrow, and 
is eternal and invariable, because God, who is its author, 
and has published it himself, is always the sole master and 
sovereign of mankind ;" that " whoever violates it, re- 
nounces his own nature, divests himself of humanity, and 
will be rigorously punished for his disobedience."! 

Thus, in Rome, the " Higher Law," which you affect to 
despise, and call in ridicule " Babel-building," was regard- 
ed as the fundamental and absolute law of the nation by 
the highest legal authorities. JS^or was it allowed by the 
best Roman minds that any decree of the Senate counter 
to this Higher Law was obligatory upon the people. There 
was a class of pettifoggers in that age, as there is now, 
who sophisticated the subject of law, and tried to' make un- 
righteous legislation reasonable and acceptable. The 
" Higher Law" school, at the head of which stood Cicero, 
advocated that unjust ordinances and decrees were equiva- 
lent to an attempt to " create law," which was in its^elf im- 
possible. t It was contended by these noble civilians that 
that is not law, and, therefore, not obligatory, which is not 
in itself just. Nor could the people alter any thing in 
this respect. They were bound by the eternal law as much 



* De Omc, ]. 3, c. 5. Ibid. Also 9tli Law Die;, et Justit et Jure, 1. 
1, tit. 1. 

t De Eepiib., 1. 3. Apud Soct. Inst. Div., 1. G, c. 8. See also Marcus 
TuUus Onit. de lege Agra. Also Theophilus de Jure, Nature et gent., 
§ 6. Also Soto. De'Justl^ et Jure, 1. 4. 



t See Cicero De Leg., 1. 1. 



PRO-SLAYER Y MEN. 19 

as the Senate. They had no power to make injustice right, 
nor to bind any man to the performance of an unjust act. 
" If laws," said he, " could be created by the ordinances of 
the people, the decrees of princes, or the sentences of the 
judges," as was the doctrine of some, then " robbery might 
be lawful, adultery might be lawful, setting up forged wills 
might be lawful, if these should be approved by the votes 
or the ordinances of the multitude."^ 

The same corrupting and destructive sophistry was then 
stealing its way into Roman society, under the influence 
of slaveholders, which is now so alarmingly prevalent in 
portions of American society, namely : that whatever the 
supreme power decrees in a nation is right, and, therefore, 
binding. Cicero saw the fatal consequences of this sophis- 
try, and met it as it deserves to be met in America. '' If," 
said he, " there be such a power in the decrees and com- 
mands of fools, that the nature of things is changed by 
their votes, why do they not decree that what is bad and 
pernicious shall be regarded as good and wholesome ? or 
why, if the law can make wrong right, can it not make bad 
good ?"t 

Natural law — equal and eternal justice — is the basis of 
all human law, said Cicero, t and this was according to the 
arguments of all wise men who had preceded him.s^ " I 
see this," says he, " to have been the opinion of the wisest 
men, that law is not something wrought out by man's inge- 
nuity, nor is it a decree of the people, but it is somethino- 
eternal, governing the world by the wisdom of its com- 
mands and prohibitions." Hence he declared that " those 
who had made pernicious and unjust decrees =^ ^ ^ had 
made any thing rather than laws." 

It was all to no purpose, however, that Cicero attempted 
to beat back the flood of legal corruption that was over- 
whelming the nation. The supporters of injustice — the 
aristocracy, the slaveholders — who had already gone far 
in robbing the people, in crushing free labor, in making the 



t Ibid. 

X Ibkl, 1. 2. 

S Ibid, 1. 4. 



20 LETTERS TO 

people the infamous tools of their own ruin, in corrupting 
the Senate, the judges, and every possible source of right, 
had too firmly established themselves for Cicero to succeed 
in restoring the nation to first principles. When the 
sources of legislation become so corrupt that tliere is not 
moral energy enough to recover first principles, the ruin of 
the civil state, the destruction of society, is as inevitable 
as if the avenging angel dashed his exterminating thun- 
ders upon the nation in one awful blaze. Roman slave- 
holders triumphed ; they warred against God and his law 
of nations; they destroyed free labor, common education, 
robbed the people of their lands, covered them with slaves ; 
and Rome the Republic fell, and Caesar ascended the 
throne. 

Ah, sirs, once break down the law of right — let a nation 
once concede that one man may without crime hold another 
in slavery, and rob him of his rights — once let the people 
join with the slaveholder and say there is no higher law 
than the decrees of the slave power — once compromise jus- 
tice for the sake of union and peace — and every pillar of 
the civil temple has become rotten, cankered, and eaten by 
worms ; then but a footfall, the jar of the passing train, a 
single human voice, may throw the pile of ages into a heap 
of desolate ruins. 

Society from everlasting is built upon the same prin- 
ciples. Those principles are God's, not man's. They are 
for the safety of no class to the exclusion of others. They 
are for the equal safety of all. Lay your impious hands 
upon them for their destruction, and your own ruin is cer- 
tain. Break down the fences and guards around freedom, 
and you shall be the first to be made a slave when the 
master-tyrant comes. Open the vray for despots, and you 
shall be the first to be crushed under his iron heel. 

What did Caesar do when he had conquered the coward 
slavemasters by the sound of his name ? He saw the 
shameful degradation of the people, the despotism of the 
petty tyrants, the land crowded with slaves and all in 
ruins. He called to him the wisest of the Romans. ^Vere 
these the friends of slavery ? Far from that. Of Agrippa 
and Msecenas he asked what was best to be done. The 



PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 21 

power, said he, is now in my hands ; what shall I do with 
it ? Shall I re-build the lost Republic ? or shall I hold 
the power as the supreme head, and make mj decrees abso- 
lute? And Agrippa replied: "Restore the Republic to 
her ancient lav/s of freedom and equality, for they who are 
born in the same state desire equality, of which being pos- 
sessed, they rejoice, and grieve when deprived of it ; and 
all men, as they are descended from the gods, and are to 
return unto them, look upwards, and will neither be ever 
under the dominion of one, nor patiently bear to be par- 
takers of labors, dangers, and expenses, and be deprived of 
the communication of better things." But this did not so 
well please Ca3sar. There was no virtue to cement a new 
Republic. There were few but masters and slaves. These 
could make no Republic. Then Mascenas advised that Csesar 
should retain the supreme power, and, as the saviour of his 
country, restore freedom and equality to the people, and force 
the robbers to give back the stolen lands to the rightful own- 
ers, and revive the honor of free labor. But Csesar the 
conqueror was himself a slave, and he feared to restore 
justice, lest justice should restore him. 

Other emperors succeeded. Some recorded their acts in 
blood and the tears of widows and orphans and wretched 
men ; others, with noble deeds, gave their names to the 
pleasant memories of all fature ages. There were three 
who would have restored all men to freedom and their 
equal rights, but had too little faith in the power of the 
people to sustain them in the immediate and entire eman- 
cipation of the slaves, and the full restoration of free labor 
to its honor and lost rights. Besides, the wealthy citizens, 
who were the slaveholders, held many of the oiEces of gov- 
ernment, and those who held no office had the power of 
corrupting those who had. Antoninus Pius, Theodosius the 
Younger, and Justinian, (the three emperors referred to) 
found themselves obliged to resort to more indirect meth- 
ods to destroy slavery and restore the sinking power of the 
nation. Their first step was to encourage manumissions, 
and to confer Roman citizenship upon those manumitted. 
The learned Gothofred, referring to the three noble edicts 
of these emperors for conferring citizenship upon the manu- 



22 LETTEES TO 

mitted slaves, says, " Thus good princes are usually wont 
to surpass each other in governing their subjects with equal 
right. ''''^ 

Another indirect means was to restore, in form at least, 
the grand fundamental law of society and government. 
The most eminent jurists were employed to look into the 
laws of all nations — to digest their principles and develop 
them in form. The ancient laws of Rome were to be espe- 
cially regarded. In the results of this immense labor, of 
the wisest lawyers under the wisest of the emperors, we 
have developed what I have asserted, namely, that the fun- 
damental laws of all societies and governments are the 
same, and those are " the laios of nature,''^ which in their 
legitimate action render slavery impossible. The Roman 
jurists found that the basis of law in every nation was 
" common impartial justice" — " equal right" — " equity" — a 
recognition of the " natural right to freedom of every man." 
" All nations governed by laws and customs," said they, 
" make use partly of their own law and partly of the law 
common to all men."t This latter Cicero had observed, 
and said of it, " The law of all nations forbids one man to 
pursue his advantage at the expense of another."! And 
the Digest declared, as well as the Institutes, that *' the 
natural law, equally recognized among all nations, being 
created by Divine Providence, always remains firm and 
immutable ;"^ and that " the law which natural reason has 
established among all men, is equally held by all, and is 
called the Law of Nature, as a law which all nations use ;"ll 
and then, that " Jure Naturale omnes libei'i nascuntur''^ — 
that " lij the Laiv of Nature all men are hornfree.^'' 

Thus the fundamental law of all nations, in the time of 
the Romans, declared the equal freedom of all men, and 
this law, " being created by Divine Providence," said the 
Roman jurists, " always remains firm and immutable." 
" Nor can it be altered nor amended," said Cicero, " much 
less abolished." 



* BolUn Coiit. Con-., p. 60. 

t Dig.. 1. 1, tit. 1. See also Inst., 1. 1, tit. 2, § 1. 

X De Off., 1. 3, c. 5. 

\ Dio-., 1. 1. Inst., 1. 1. tit. 2. 

II Instit., 1. 1. tit 2, \ 1.' 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 23 

This immutable principle Wiis affirmed and re-affirmed 
by tbe best of the Roman emperors ; but, joined with all 
their wisest statesmen and jurists, they were impotent to 
save Rome. The slavemaster had struck the parricidal 
blow which no physician could heal. The last drops of 
virtuous blood were ebbing quite away, and only the black 
blood of vice remained. Thus Rome died the victim of 
slavery. 



24 LETTERS TO 



LETTEE III. 

Is it not as absurd to suppose that society organizes with- 
out its " natural law^'' as that crystalizatiou or germination 
and growth occur without their definite and invariable 
laws ? Is not association as natural to man as it is to the 
bee and the beaver ? Does not human society spring spon- 
taneously from the soul and sentiment of human nature, the 
roots of which shoot down into the moral element of the 
universe ? 

How orderly, how regular is crystalizatiou ! How ad- 
mirable is the formation of organic being ! ' Not, however, 
unless their fundamental laws are dominant. Let other 
and foreign forces enter, and how ugly every thing becomes ! 
In all the orderly processes of nature, every part that en- 
ters to make up the great whole has a common interest. 
It has its state and place, but its relation is equal. The 
sublime law that guides it to its place has no respect to 
parts. They are all divine, and have a sacred mission. 

So in the orderly processes of legitimate society. The 
law of their occurrence is common, universal. Every indi- 
vidual part, every man, has his equal right with every 
other. lie has his state and place determined him, not by 
the arbitr^^-y will of a few, but by that common law — 
God's enactment — that determines the state and place of 
every man as he freely moves in the Maelstrom of the 
world. 

The moment one part, or one man, assumes to himself 
what is not common to all, disturbance enters the mass, 
distraction seizes other members ; orderly arrangement, 
then, is impossible. Yet the law that struggles for this 
will still be seen, but the result is an irregular formation, 
as much difierent from legitimate society as a rough lump 
of dingy quartz is unlike the transparent and geometrical 
crystal. Hence Plato : " That which is of a common or 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 25 

public nature unites, while private interest segregates and 
dissociates."^ 

It was the latter that ruined Greece — the private inter- 
est of sla\'^holders. The same destroyed Rome. The 
common law of association — the equal right of all — was 
forced aside. It was denied its action. Partial legisla- 
tion was allowed. Ah, sirs, how ruinous to all govern- 
ment is that ! It licenses rights (wrongs) to a few it 
would be impossible for all to exercise ! How has govern- 
ment the authority to do for the few what it cainiot do for all ? 
All associate and appoint government for the common ben- 
efit of aU. There is no legitimate right short of that. The 
assumed rio;ht of the slaveholder is not the common right 
of all, else all would have the right to enslave all. That 
is impossible. 

Common right is universal, equal, opposed to the as- 
sumed right of the few. Government, then, cannot allow 
it, as it is built on common law, common right, justice. 
Government cannot, then, sanction slaveholding — that 
would be justice sanctioning injustice. It would be favor- 
ing assianed partial right in its warfare against common 
right — against the fundamental principle of government. 
Not government, then, but arbitrary power, sanctions slav- 
ery. For common-right law is fundamental — the first, 
prime, sole law of social organization — the primal law of 
human relations. It is absolute. Would you go behind 
that ? you shall meet flice to face the Eternal God. Would 
you pierce beneath it ? you shall meet the impenetrable 
rock of Divine Justice. Would you soar above it? 
then you shall pass into the heavens of Infinite Love ! 

America is following Greece and Rome. She has re- 
belled against her law of laws. She has abandoned com- 
mon right. She legislates for slaveholders. Had Rome 
gone so fiir towards ruin three hundred years from her 
foundation ? How old is America ? Where is her na- 
tionality ? AVhat is her name abroad ? 

When Rome had become rotten with this sin, the barba- 
rians came forth and dragged her carcase to the pit. Yet 



* De Leg., 1. ix, p. C60. 
3 



26 LETTERS TO 

you quote Kome. " The Romans held slaves," say you, 
" and, therefore, Americans may hold slaves." Why not 
say, *' America has a right to rebel against Heaven, and 
defy Eternal Justice — commit suicide ? " 

I have shown that the fundamental 25rinciples of Roman 
law, as well as those of all other nations, recognized the 
common right of all men, and were, therefore, opposed to 
slavery. When the Barbarians overran the Roman Em- 
pire, and, at length, began to organize into associations, the 
same law of common right was developed as the basis of 
government. Normans, Saxons, Franks, Visigoths, Ostro- 
goths, Lombards, all recognized this primal principle as 
the sacred basis of their civil societies. There is a uni- 
versal concurrence among all the best writers on this^ 
point. The fundamental law of human rights was also dis- 
tinctly developed in the civil constitutions of Sweden,! 
Denmark,! Hungary,^^ Arragon and Navarre,!! Spain and 
Portugal.lT 

This was by no mere voluntary choice. It was a matter 
of absolute necessit3^ The law^ of nature obliged it, as it 
obliges the crystalic energy to fulfil its definite action to 
produce a crystal. Men may choose to associate, but they 
cannot associate in organic form without acting according to 
the common law of social organization. Hence slavery is at 
war with legitimate government, and, therefore, legitimate 
government is at war with it. When slavery triumphs, 
government is overthrown. When slavery takes the place 
of government, society is overthrown ; for society can be 
protected only by legitimate governme7it, either internally, 
from the righteousness of every man ; or externally, by the 
dread mandates of justice, in the forms of outw^ard law, 
prohibiting wrong and affixing penalties to the infringement 
of common rights. 



* See Hale's Hist. Com. Law. Stuart's Constit. of Eug. Eapin's 
Origin and Nature of Eng. Com. Law. Hallam's Mid. Ages. Hume'.-^ 
Eng. Dunhams Mid. Ages. 

t Jolvan Magnus Hist., L 15 & 29. Crantzivis, 1. 5. 

i Pontanus, L 8. 

k Donsinius, Decad 4, 1. 9. 

fl Chalcondile, 1. 5. 

*[ Molina, de Hist. Primog.. c. 2, n. 13. Greg of Tours, 1. 2. Linden- 
burg, 1. 2, tit. 2. 17 tit. Ord. Portugal, I. 2, § 2, 3, et seg. Al^o Lind., 1. 1, 
tit. 7. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 27 

While society in the Roman Empire was becoming a 
chaos of corruption, under the disorganizing influence of 
shivery, Christ was born within it as a new germinating 
and organizing energy. Only masters and slaves were to 
be found. Those who boasted of their freemanship were 
the oppressors of those called slaves. All the common of- 
fices of life had become degraded. Common charity had 
grown into a monstrous hypocrisy. Justice had fled, and 
left tyranny with its scepter of iron to rule in the name of 
law. Public virtue, there was none ; and the common 
rights of humanity were as if they had never been. The 
indolent proud lived upon the toils of those they had de- 
graded into beasts of burden, and looked with sanctimo- 
nious contempt upon the sons of labor, whom they called 
slaves ; as if labor had been designed by the Creator a deg- 
radation, and those were to be scorned and crushed under 
the iron heel of tyranny who performed the most useful, 
indispensable offices of life. 

Christ broke in upon this monstrous system, by taking 
upon himself the form of a slave, and acting in the service of 
humanity, without regard to the conventional rules of 
Scribes, Pharasees, slave-masters. He washed his disciples' 
feet, and said, " If I whom you call Lord and Master, have 
washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one anothers feet." 
There shall be, henceforth, no degradation in the offices of 
life. Ye shall have no slaves to serve you. Service, labor, 
usefulness, is henceforth to be viewed by you as holy. 
" All ye are brethren.'"^ " Call no man master, neither be 
ye called master."'^ " Ye know that they which are ac- 
counted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
them ; and their great 07ies exercise authority upon them ; 
but so it shall not be among you ; but whosoever will be 
greatest among you, shall be your mi?iister, and whosoever 
of you will be chiefest shall be the servaiit of all. For even 
the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to min- 
ister."! " Be not like the Scribes and Pharasees." " They 
bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay 



* Miitt. 23: 8—11. 
t Matt. 10 : 42—45. 



28 LETTERS TO 

them on men's shoulders, while they themselves will not 
move them with one of their fingers." They boast of their 
regard for the iav>', but " omit its weightier matters," 
"judgment, mercy and faith." They make " long prayers," 
but " devour widows' houses." They are "full of extortion 
and excess," and " like whited sepulchres, beautiful with- 
out, but within full of dead men's bones and all unclean- 
ness." They build tombs for the ancient prophets, but 
" murder those who are sent to teach them." " Be not like 
the Scribes and Pharasees." But " all things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to 
them ; for this is the law and the prophets." If ye would 
that men should slave for you, ye must likewise slave for 
them. Life is a ministry. All labor is holy, that minis- 
ters to the benefit of man. None shall be masters, none 
slaves, but all ministers of good, God's freemen ; above none, 
beneath none. "Brethren," says Paul, "ye have been 
called unto liberty," " not " that liberty " vv^hich is an oc- 
casion " or license " to the flesh ;" but that liberty in 
which, " by love we slave for one another." It is that state 
wherein freedom and slavery meet; that is, — the labor 
which those who boast of being free, leave in their pride to be 
performed by crushed humanity ; Christians shall do for 
each other and for the world as God's freemen, so that there 
shall be in the church no worldly distinctions of bond and 
free, Greek and Jew, but all shall be equal, all ministers. 
Such was the grand idea of Christian life. It was 
wholly at war with slavery. Hence the purest of the 
church fathers labored against slavery. The Christians in 
Asia Minor at a very early period " decried the lawfulness of 
it, denounced slaveholding as a sin, a violation of the law 
of nature and religion. They gave fugitive slaves asylum, 
and openly offered them protection. ""^ Maximus preached 
and wrote against it.t Those who entered upon a religious 
life gave freedom to their slaves. t Theodorus Studita, gave 
particular directions, " not to employ those beings, created 
in the image of God, as slaves."*i> Polycarp and Ignatious 

* Fletclicv's Lessons on Slavery. 
t Maximus Exposit Dom. I., f. 356. Neander. 
t Actis Sanct. Apr. T. I , append, f. 47, § 8. 
^ Ibid L. L, ep. 10. See Leander. 



PRO-SLATERY MEN. 29 

manumitted their slaves on realizing the equality of the 
Christian law. Constantine gave authority to the bishops 
to manumit slaves,^ and granted Roman citizenship to 
many of those set free.t St. Augustine speaks of the free- 
dom of slaves as a great religious virtue,! and declares the 
Christian law against regarding God's rational creation as 
property.^ 

Nor could the corrupting influence which heathenism 
and barbarism exerted upon the church, entirely destroy 
this particular mission of the gospel. Neander speaking of 
the early oriental Christians, says, " they declared them- 
selves opposed to the whole relation of slavery as repug- 
nant to the dignity of the image of God in all men."il " I 
can hardly credit," said Isidore, " that a friend of Christ, 
who has experienced that grace, which bestowed freedom 
on all, would still own slaves."1F This was the spirit that 
animated the purest men of the church. By their influence, 
laws and charters of freedom were obtained, by means of 
which immense numbers of slaves were made free."^^ They 
united their exertions to enlist even the barbarian princes 
in the cause of the slave. Remigius thus wrote to Clovis, 
" Let the gate of your palace be open to all, that every 
one may have recourse to you for justice. Employ your 
great revenues in redeeming slaves. ''ji Johannes Eleemos- 
ynarius, patriarch of Alexandria, addressing himself to a 
slaveholder, said, " Tell me what price can man pay to 
purchase a man, who was created in the image of God ? 
Hast thou a difi"erent soul ? Is he not in all things thy 
equal ? There is neither bond nor free ; all are one in 
Christ. We are all equal before Christ. What then is the 
gold you have paid for a child of God ?"|| So Lingard 



* Sozomen, 1. 1 , c. 9 —Cod. Theod., 1. 1., c. De nis qui in eccl man- 
umit. 
t Ibid 1. 2. 
j Ser. de diversis, 50. 

I Ser. de ch. mo 1. 1. 

II Neander, Hist. Chris. Ee. and Cli. vol. 3, p. 99. 
Tl Ibid. 

** Murat Antiq. Ital , v. 1, p. 84. 
ft See Life of St. Remigius. 

It Life of Johannes Eleemosyn., by Leontius. Trans., by Anastasius 
in Actis. 

3* 



30 LETTERS TO 

refers to the divine influence of tlie Christian church in 
destroying slavery.-'^ 

I have already referred, in the preceding letter, to the 
efforts of Justinian to restore the fundamental lav>^ of soci- 
ety, by v/hich all men are pronounced free. In 539 he 
determined by an edict that masters had no power to 
separate families in the sak of slaves, and that it was a 
crime.! And Gregory the Great pronounced it " a cruel 
evil," " a great crime," and declared a severe punishment 
upon the bishops who allowed it in their bishopries.! 
Charlemagne issued a decree against it.§ And Constan- 
tino and Constantinus, both made the subjection of females 
to slavery a capital crime. II 

Gregory the Great was born in Rome, among the nobil- 
ity, about 545. He filled for a time the office of praetor, 
and held numerous slaves. After his conversion, he aban- 
doned his civil office, and devoted himself to the church. 
On the death of Pelagius II, he was chosen bishop of Eome. 
.His heathenism and pride of superiority clung to him with 
,great tenacity, notwithstanding he acknowledged the equal 
rights of mankind as recognized not only by the fundamen- 
tal principles of the state, but by the Christian religion. 
On granting freedom to his slaves, he gave as his reason 
the consideration of what Christ had done, " that he might 
free us by his grace from the chains of bondage in which 
we were enthralled, and restore us to our original freedom. 
.So a good and salutary thing is done," said he, " when men, 
.whom nature from the begimiiyig created free, and whom the 
customs of nations had subjected to the yoke of servitude, 
are presented again with the freedom in which they were 
borny'^ He also admonished slaveholders that those they 
held in bondage were " their equals,'" that " by nature they 
.were created upon a level with their slaves."^^ Still he 
favored making chattels of the heathenM 

* See liis Ant. Anglo Saxou church, c. 1. 

t Novell, 162, c. 3. 

i Greg. 1. 3, ind. 3, ch. 12. 

4 Council of Chalons, Can. 30. 

II Cod. Theod , 1. 9, tit. 29, leg. 1, 5. 



T[ Greg. Magn. op. Polguss., 1. 4, c. 1, § 3. 

** Postorulis Curae, 3, c 1, admon. 6. 

tt See Greg. Mag., F. E. i\, 1. 10, ep. 52, 



ep. 34. 



and 1. 2, ep. 39, and 1. 5, 



PRO-SLAVEllY MEN. 31 

About tlie eiglith century the old Ptoman slavery had 
been quite overthrown, but a new form had also been ri- 
sing to take its place — that, consequent upon the wars of 
the " Barbarians." The good men of the church had this 
to contend with. I have already referred to the letter of 
St. Remigius to Clovis to induce him to exert his power 
and bestow his wealth in the cause of suffering captives. 
Nor did Clovis disregard alto2;ether such admonitions : for 
he sent a circular letter to all the bishops in his dominions, 
in which he allowed them to give liberty to any of the cap- 
tives he had taken, and thus save them from slavery .=^ A 
volume might be filled with the most interesting incidents, 
showing the noble exertions of the purest and best men of 
the church in that fearful period, agiiinst the barbarous in- 
stitution. 

"What a beautiful example we have in the life of Cesarius 
in the sixth century ! When the Franks and Burgundians 
laid seige to Arls, and a great many captives were brought 
into the city to be sold, this good christian hastened to 
the church, stripped all the silver ornaments from the pil- 
lars and railings, took the sacred vessels, the silver cen- 
sers, chalices and all, for the relief of the captives and 
the freedom of those in bonds, saying, — " Our Lord cele- 
brated his last supper in mean earthern dishes, not in plate, 
and we need not scruple to part with his vessels to ransom 
those he has redeemed with his life."! 

There were Pharasees then, as now, who regarded such*an 
act as a great sacrilege. The good man replied " I would 
fain know if those who censure what we do, would not be 
glad to be ransomed themselves in like manner, were the 
same misfortune to befall them."t The wiser and better 
men of the church always commended this. Lactantius 
said of it : " It is justice which the free owe to those in 
bonds."^ And again he says : " Justice teaches men to 
know God and to love men, to love and assist one another, 
heiiig all equally the children of Go.'?. "II 



*Life of St. Eemigius. 

fLife of St. Cesarius. 

tibid. 

^Lactant, Div. Just. p. 587. 

Ijlbid. 



32 LETTERS TO 

This had been a frequent practice in the church. St. 
Ambrose ordered the priests to sell all the sacred vases in 
order to redeem slaves and set them free. " The Lord" 
said he " will say to us, ' why are so many unfortunate be- 
ings subject to slavery, even death, for want of being re- 
deemed ? Men are better worth preserving than metals.' 
What have you to reply ? Must we deprive the temples 
of their ornaments ? But the Lord will say — 'It is not 
necessary that the sacred things be clothed in gold.' "^ 
St. Augustine also practised the like thing repeatedly, and 
justified it as a duty the free owed to those in slavery.! 
If Christ could lay down his life for the redemption of 
mankind, how could the church refuse its treasures for the 
redemption of captives. Christ came to break the bonds 
in sunder and to let the captive go free. Nor did Augus- 
tine shun to rebuke the oppressors and enslavers of man- 
kind. " Those are not societies'^'' said he, " whose supreme 
law is not justice, they are only marjna latrociiiia^ great 
confederacies of thieves or robbers. Society cannot co?isist 
without justice yX 

There were christians in those days of peril, who did 
not fear to meet tyrants face to face. Death was no terror 
to them. They were ready to die for the oppressed. Many 
went so far as to enslave themselves for the freedom of 
others. They conferred not with flesh and blood. They 
took their lives in their hands and went out amid the bar- 
barians to save humanity from degradation and miserable 
thraldom. Heaven was the only reward they expected. 
By their energy, countless slaves were made free. In the 
name of God and Christ and humanity they accosted the 
slave masters. St. Cyprian said to Demetrius the tryant, 
" You, man of a day, expect from your slav^e obedience. 
Is he less a man than you? By birth he is your equal. 
He is endowed with the same organs, with the same rea- 



*St. Amb. Trent, de Offic, p. 103. 

tLife of St. Aiigustine — Possid, vit. Aug. capiat 2-i. — Cyril of Jeru- 
salem taught the same. Vide. Iheodoret,!. ii. c 27. Also, Acacius of 
Amida. Vid. Socrat, 1. 7. c. 24. — So also Deigratias of Carthage. Vid. — 
Vict, de Persec. Vandal, 1. i. 

tAugust, de Civit, Dei. 1. 4. c. 4. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 33 

soiling soul, called to the same hopes, subject to the same 
laws of life in this and in the world to come. You subject 
him to your dominion. If he, as a man, disregard or for- 
get your claim, what miseries you heap upon him. Im- 
pious master, pitiless despot ! You spare neither blows 
nor whips, nor privations ; you chastise him with hunger 
and thft'st, you load him with chains, you incarcerate him 
within black walls ; miserable man ! While you thus main- 
tain your despotism over a man, you are not willing to re- 
cognize the Master and Lord of all men."^ 

How does this compare with the " South side view of 
slavery," with the letter of a " northern presbyter," with 
the reasonino; of Dr. Blasfdeu. " Both relio;ion and hu- 
manity" said Cyprian, " make it a duty for us to work for 
the deliverance of the captive. It is Christ himself whom 
we ought to consider in our captive brothers."! Not so ! 
Not so ! cry our new light doctors of divinity. " Religion 
makes it our duty to aid the oppressor, to return the cap- 
tive to bonds and stripes ; and as for humanity, that is on- 
ly the foam and froth in the boiling pot of society. So 
these fine doctors of to day, advocate the superiority of 
barbarism, repeat the creed of old tyrants, take the side 
of heathenism and atheism against Christianity, while yet 
they pretend to be christians. They would send their 
mothers into slavery if they had been born under a task- 
master and the tyrant demanded the sacrifice; for " this" 
say they, " is law and order." Such law and order, gentle- 
men, as sunk Greece, buried Rome, plunged mankind into 
palpable night, extinguishing the last taper of science and 
the last star of hope. 

*St. Cyp. t. V. Dernet. 

fSt. Cyprian to the Bisliop of XumiJia. 



34 LETTERS TO 



LETTER IV. 

Feudalism onginatecl as a protective system. The equal 
riglits of the jDOople \Yere to be sacredly regarded. Justice 
was recognized as the basis. The people entrusted their 
rights in the hands of chieftains. They, in turn, solemnly 
pledged themselves to protect those rights with the aid of 
the people themselves. The leaders took advantage of the 
power they found in their hands to enslave their subjects. 
What had been a mere conditional trust they gradually 
assumed as an unconditional rifrht. Instead of beino; 
magistrates and protectors, they became oppressive robbers, 
cruel task-masters. The people degenerated into slaves. 
As this dreadful state of things progressed over Europe, 
the blackness of night settled down upon all nations. The 
elements of society were dissolved. Even those who flat- 
tered themselves with the name of freemen were, like the 
free blacks of the Southern States, but a slight remove from 
absolute slavery. Knowledge fled. Master and slave were 
alike benighted and beastly. The tenant could not dispose 
of the effects of his own industry ,"5^ and he buried his tal- 
ents and turned his hands to villany. He was forbidden 
to marry without purchasing the consent of his petty 
tyrantjt and he stole connections without regard to primal 
law. He was forbidden to marry beyond the limits of his 
nabob's dominions.l He was thus degraded in all respects 
as a man. 

Black and revolting as feudal slavery was, however, it 
was a virtuous institution compared with the slavery of the 
Southern States of America. Not, indeed, in all history — 
not in the darkest days of ancient barbarism, can be found 

* Duchcrii SpiceL torn. xi. 374, 375. 

t Miirat, Ant. Ital. vol. 4, p. 20. Orel, des Eois de France, torn. i. p. 
22. Tom. iii. p. 203. 
I Hist, de Daupliine, torn. i. p. 81. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 35 

a system of despotism so utterl}' destitute of one redeeming 
quality as that of American bondage. Even in the worst 
days of Roman and European slavery, the miserable 
wretches were not forbidden to acquire knowledge. Some 
Roman slaves were eminently learned. No special meas- 
ures were instituted to prevent bondmen from becoming 
noble specimens of humanity. Thus heathen barbarism 
was more Christian in its system of slavery than the Christ- 
ian barbarism in America. You, sirs, resort to the most 
diabolical measures to crush the minds out of the human 
beings you enslave. Where was despotism ever found 
equal to the present educational laws of Virginia !=^ 

In the European slavery in its worst days, a slave on 
taking holy orders became free.t American slaves, on 
becoming ministers of Christ, are still held slaves. So on 
any agreeable event, European princes used to testify their 
gratitude by enfranchising great numbers of slaves.1^ But 
when to you has ever come the occasion that brought with 
it such gratitude to God ? So the Christian Church, as I 
have already shown, regarded it as a mark of the purest 
religious fervor for a master to manumit his slaves ^ with- 
out pecuniary considerations ; while 3'our church makes 
slavery a virtue — a divine right, and freeing men from 
bondage, a vice — a sin. 

In the darkest period of European history, there were 
some men who violentlj^ opposed freeing slaves. " It is 
dangerous^'^ said they. 1| Fools! dangerous to whom ? to 
society? As if a band of robbers were a society ! Does 
the existence of society depend upon the smallest possible 
amount of freedom, and the greatest possible amount of 
slavery ? 

This, sirs, is your cry — " danger to society!" This is 
your plea for not favoring manumissions. As if freedom 
were a greater evil to society than slavery ; as if society 
could be preserved by slavery, and annihilated by every 



* See Educational Laws of Virginia. Boston : Jewett & Co. 
t Murat, Ant. p. 842. 

I Marculsi Form, 1. 1, c. 39. 
§ Ibid, 1. 2, c. 23, 33, 34. 

II Potgiess, 1. iv. 2, 2, § 6. Morice, Mem. pour serv. preuves a Pliist. 
de Bret. torn. ii. p. 100, 



36 LETTERS TO 

man enjoying his absolute rights ; — as if the fundamental 
principles of society are not in reality identical with the 
primal rights of all men. 

The fundamental law of society — equal human rights — 
was urged in Spain against slavery in the eighth century 
with much energy and effect,^ and by the fourteenth cen- 
tury nearly every civil society in Europe had gone far to- 
wards universal emancipation. Kings were not unwilling 
to declare the equal rights of their enslaved subjects, and 
to exert themselves for the overthrow of domestic bondage. 
The school-men every where discussed the natural and 
inherent rights of the people, and the light which they 
shed upon this subject had no inconsiderable influence in 
preparing even the minds of princes for the great change. 

In the year 1315, Louis X. of France, issued an edict 
for the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the 
people. This noble document is a standing reproach to 
republican despots. " As all men are hy nature free born,'''' 
said the French King, " and as this kingdom is called the 
Kingdom of Franks, [freemen] it shall be so in reality. It 
is therefore decreed that enfranchisements shall be granted 
throughout the whole kingdom upon just and reasonable 
conditions."! Three years after, Philip, the brother of 
Louis, confirmed the same edict. I 

Ah, sirs ! when a long inactive law of nature springs 
into energy in the midst of confusion and disorder, how 
admirable is it to see order and beauty spring up with it I 
The enslaved people of France, without a center of action, 
had lived without unity, without public spirit, in factional 
divisions, without society, degraded. 

The revival of this fundamental law quickened, as by 
an electric flash, the central energies of the nation. The 
heart of France beat with new life ; the dissociated ele- 
ments began to coalesce in crystaline order. New organic 
parts st^irted into form. Sirs ! when has not liberty 
been the greatest boon to a people ? When has not sla- 
very been their greatest ciu'se ? 



* Bodin de Repub., c. 5. 
t Ordon, torn. i. p. 583. 
t Ibid, p. 653. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 37 

Louis X. and his brotker Philip are not the only 
princes who have acknowledged the natural liberty and 
equality of all men. Frederic II. was one of those honest 
and true noblemen, who, scoffing at the arrogance of bloated 
aristocracy, and the bigoted pride of kings, confessed the 
grand law that mankind were created equal and free.=^ 

How important the fact, that the best minds in all ages 
have recognized this principle of nature ! How significant 
that despotism has ever denied it, and has ever been at 
war with it ! — that only tyrants, and robbers should have 
the disposition to oppose this self-evident truth ! What a 
lesson ! that tyrants in Grreece triumphed over it, and sunk 
the nation into barbarism ! — that slaveholders trampled 
upon it in Rome, and drove liberty and virtue forever from 
the eternal city. How impressive, that the lords of Eu- 
rope waged war against it, and converted all that had been 
called society into a mass of moral putridity — black and 
loathsome ! How beautiful, that while the church fostered 
and preserved it as a divine principle, it in turn preserved 
her, and gave her the love and reverence of humanity ! 

When it was once more revived in the hearts of the na- 
tions — when it had roused and quickened the consciences 
of kings — when it had become enthroned in the courts of 
judicature, and was felt as the law of the twelve peers — 
how soon did slavery and anarchy and disorder vanish, and 
the new light of civilization arise ! 

In France, all the noted writers on law, at an early pe- 
riod, decided that slavery was contrary to the common 
law,t and that no slave could touch French soil without 
instantly becoming a freeman. Even a foreign ambassador 
was not allowed to hold a man in involuntary servitude. 
The slave of a Spanish minister was pronounced a freeman 
by the French judges. Nor could the distinguished posi- 
tion of the claimant have any influence upon the court to 
allow his claim. I Some complained of this want of re- 
spect to his office and rank,^ though the correctness of the 

* See Bancroft's Hist. U. S., vol. v. p. 7. 
t Hargi-ave, in the case of Somerset, 
j See Badin de Repub., 1. 1, c. 5. 

§ Kircher, de Legat., 1. 2, c. 1, n. 233. Binkershock Juge compet. 
des. Amb., ed. par Barbyr, c. 15, s. 3. 

4 



38 LETTERS TO 

principle was universally conceded. The Dutch States, in 
a similar case, allowed this law of society to be trampled 
upon, out of respect to the minister of a foreign court,"^ 
and received hisses for their pusillanimity. 

That policy creates only contempt which tamely allows 
injustice out of respect to empty titles or any other matter 
of accident. France respected herself, and sustained her 
law of personal rights ; and she had the respect of the 
world. The Northern States of the American Union are 
bound to maintain as sacred the same eternal law. It is 
the fLmdamental principle of their constitutions. But they 
have deserted that, for the defence and perpetuity of which 
Whig fathers labored, suffered, and died. This law has 
been deserted by the North, not out of respect to the claims 
of foreign ministers, but to satisfy the demands of petty 
tyrants — plantation masters ; and at how great a cost ! 

In England the battle against slavery was long and ar- 
duous, sometimes extremely bloody ; for the pro-slaver}' 
party was always active, and consisted of the most unprin- 
cipled men of the kingdom. They fought against the fun- 
damental law of society, in order to maintain their own 
unjust assumptions. The friends of justice and freedom 
improved every advantage to give su]3remacy to this law 
and to overthrow slavery. No man was allowed to be tried 
on a question involving his personal rights without a jury 
of twelve men. No claimant of a slave could touch the 
man till twelve peers had set in judgment upon the case ; 
and they were always, when fairly chosen, on the side of 
freedom. It was by the institution of jury trial that slav- 
ery was completely annihilated. Laws, too, were enacted 
by Parliament for increasing the advantages in favor of 
freedom,! though not without the most strenuous opposi- 
tion of the slavemasters. Many were manumitted by pos- 
itive enactments in the days of Edward I.t Every possi- 
ble legal obstruction was thrown in the way of the claim- 
ant, whilst all possible advantage was given to the alleged 



* \Vicqi;efort's Ambass., p. 268. 

t Co. Litt. 139.— Fitzli. Nat. Br. 78, C. D. 13th Edw. 2, 408. Litt. s. 
20—209, & 2 Ro. Abr. 735-737. 

j Britt. Cap. 31, — Wirror of Justice, c 2, s. 38. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 39 

slave.^ If the nabob failed to prove his claim clearly, de- 
cidedly, agaiust all possible doubts thrown in on the side 
of liberty, he was amerced.t How different is that from 
the manner in which slavery is treated in this boasting 
land of freedom. Shame on this boast ! Ye are worse 
than barbarians. 

Even as early as 1102, shortly after the accession of 
Henry I. of England, the anti-slavery spirit was so strong 
in that nation, that, in a national ecclesiastical council, held 
at Westminster, under Anselm, " it was forbidden to sell 
men like cattle, which had been too generally practised in 
England, "$ especially since the conquest of William of 
Normandy. Here it is important to remark, that this con- 
queror, or robber, on gaining possession of England, at- 
tempted a regular system of slavery. He was prevented 
from fully carrying out his purpose only by the resolute 
resistance of the Saxons. He attempted, by overthrowing 
the fundamental principles of government, and by setting 
up an arbitrary and despotic system, to reduce the Saxons 
to the condition of abject servitude to liimself and to his 
Norman lords. Henry I., on taking the throne, promised 
the people their natural rights. To make sure of that, they re- 
quired him to give them a charter of those rights and his 
solemn oath to maintain it. He complied. This charter 
of En owlish liberties was reorarded as the law of the land. 
It recognized the great primal law of nature, giiaranteed 
justice and right to every man, and prepared the way for 
the total abolition of slavery in the kingdom. 

Seventy years after, the great synod of Ireland de- 
nounced the " slave trade in which the Irish had made 
bond slaves of the English, contrary to the right of Chris- 
tian freedom ;" declaring, also, that " they had purchased 
of robbers and pirates, as well as of merchants — a crime 
for which God took vengeance upon the nation by deliver- 
ing them into like bondage ;" and therefore '' uiumimously 
decreed and ordained, that all the English throughout Ire- 



■* Bi-itt., Wing ed., c. 31, p. 78.— Rust. ent. tit. Homine Ecplegiando, 
373. Lib. Inst. 56. 

t Fitzh. Arb. Villen. 38. 

t Vid. Butler's Lives. — A7iselm. 



40 LETTERS TO 

land^ in a state of slavery, should he restored to their natu- 
ral freedom.''''^ Thus Ireland has the honor of the first 
general emancipation act known in history. 

There is nothing more marked in the history of English 
jurisprudence than the fact, that, up to the time of the 
bloody Stuarts, the courts of justice presumed in favor of 
liberty in the trial of the claims of slavemasters.t A fu- 
gitive claimed by the master had the right of Habeas Cor- 
pus and Homine Replegiando.X The latter gave great ad- 
vantage to freedom. 

How much different is all that from the course pursued 
in this boasting land of democracy ! Here, slave-masters 
rule the courts, and convert the temples of justice into 
slave-pens. Every advantage is given to the claims of the 
petty tyrant. Instead of a jury of twelve men, a commis- 
sioner is appointed, in mockery of justice, and he is paid a 
premium for deciding in favor of slavery. Ah, sirs, what 
a difference is that ! How infamous ! How barbarous ! 
The English law said, " Impious and cruel is he to be es- 
teemed who favors not liberty."<i> But you make Ameri- 
can law to say, " Impious and accursed shall he be es- 
teemed who favors not slavery." " Justice must be done 
to every man," says the English lawJI " Not so," say you ; 
"justice shall not be done to every man. Four millions of 
men, women and children shall be denied justice. They 
shall be held in eternal bondage, though innocent of crime." 
" A bad custom or usage is to be abolished," said the Eng- 
lish law ;1[ and away went slavery. " Not so," say you ; 
" that principle would ruin America. Bad customs are to 
be fostered and nursed," as Greece and Home nursed slav- 
ery till it had destroyed both. 

Slavery originated in the barbarism of war and piracy. 
It exists by no other claim than that of the freebooter. 



* Vid. jMoore's Hist. Ireland, vol. 2, p. 232. Chronica Hibernio?. 
Cott. Lib Dom. A. 18. Stephens' West Ind. Slav., vol. 1, p. 6. 

t Vid. Lib. Listrut., 176 a 177, b. & Bro. Arb. Vil. 66.-47, Hen. 3. 
St. Dev. Fitz. Arb., vil. 39. 

t Ibid. Also Fitzh. N.Br. 66, & Lib. Instrut. 176 a. 177-6. 

§ Cod. Lit., 124. 

jl Jeuk Cent., 93. 

*if Cod. Lit., 141. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 41 

The laws of all Christendom denounce that a capital crime. 
The laws of the United States so regard the first act of en- 
slaving men. They pronounce it piracy ; why ? Mani- 
festly because it is impossible to regard it in any other 
light, for the plain reason that the law of nature — the laws 
of all nations — regard every man as possessing absolute 
rights, of which, to attempt to deprive him by force, is rob- 
bery and murder — a crime against society and against God. 
The primal law of society, then, is supreme. It is the 
highest law, and its violation is the highest crime against 
society. Nothing can be lawful and right that makes war 
upon that. All enactments, to be law, must harmonize 
with it. To enforce an opposing enactment is suicidal, de- 
structive of all government. Hence slavery can never be 
sanctioned by society. It can be supported, not by gov- 
ernment, but only by a band of robbers in the name of 
government. Human rights are divine. That which is at 
war with those rights is not of God, but of the Devil. It 
was legitimate law which overthrew European slavery ; 
while bastard law, diabolical edicts, sham legislation, at- 
tempted to sustain it. God and the people were against 
the Devil and the tyrants. The latter were defeated. But 
here you are, sirs, in the nineteenth century, defending p- 
rates, robbers, despots, and the Devil ; making war against 
the Almighty and the people's rights. Do 3'ou expect to 
triumph ? " The day cometh that shall burn as an oven." 



42 LETTERS TO 



LETTER V. 

It has been seen that just when the old Roman slavery 
was being destroyed, the feudal slavery of the middle ages 
arose. Alas ! that just when this latter was expiring 
throughout Europe, under the powerful influence of the 
natural law of society, another and a still more horrid form 
of this monster should arise — the bondage of the African. 

But little more than a century had passed after Louis X. 
and his brother Philip, of France, had decreed that " as 
all men are by nature free born," enfranchisements should 
be granted throughout the whole kingdom upon just and 
reasonable conditions ; when popes Martin V., Eugene 
lY., Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Sextus IV.,^ assumed 
the right in the name of God and Christ to grant power to 
the kings and princes of Portugal to enslave the poor Afri- 
cans. 

This was not the first attempt of the popes to give an 
open and direct sanction to involuntary bondage. It would 
not have answered for them to have made even this attempt 
oT enslaving the Africans, without the specious pretext that 
their purpose was the conversion of these heathen. The 
bulls however expressly granted the right of robbery and 
murder thus : — '■'•to appropriate the kingdoms, goods, and 
possessions of all infidels or heathen in Africa, or whereso- 
ever found," to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, or 
to destroy them from the earth," — " to take any of the 
Guiiieans, or other negroes, by force or by barter."! 

Thus modern negro slavery had its origin in the bulls of 
five Roman popes, in the most corrupt age of the church. 
Such, then, gentlemen, is the origin of your beautiful, your 

* The following are the dates of these bulls, 1430, 1438, 1454, 1458, 
1484. Vid. Colonize AnglicaijB Illustratse. By Wm. Bollan, Lond. 
1762. Part I, pp. 115—141. 

t Ibid. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 48 

virtuous, your " peculiar institution " at the South. How 
charmingly you and the popes have met together, and I 
shall soon show how you and the Tories kiss each other. 

It is a notorious fact that the popes generally, from a 
very early period, had been on the side of slavery. Leo 
IX., in 1051, condemned the mistresses of the priests to a 
state of absolute slavery.^ So Gregory XL, in his bull 
against the Florentines in 13T(), declared their property to 
be at the mercy of any who wished to rob them, and exhorted 
the world to seize their person wherever found, and reduce 
them to absolute slavery.! 

Between the bull of Calixtus III., in 1458, and that of 
Sextus IV., in 1484, granting the right to enslave the 
Africans, a bull was issued by Pius IL, in 1462 in which 
this pope remonstrated against the Portuguese enslaving 
the Christians. But not one word does he utter asrainst 
enslaving the poor heathen in Africa. 

The first pope who took any direct steps to suppress 
African slavery in the Bomish church, was Gregory XVI., 
in 1839. And though he quotes the precedence of other 
popes, yet I find none of them he refers to, issued any bull 
against African slavery. He refers to Pius VIL, as oppo- 
sing the slave trade, but it was not the African slave trade. 
He refers to Paul III. But Paul III. only condemned 
the slavery of the Indians. Though it is due to say that 
some declare he imprecated a curse on those who should 
enslave any class of men.X So Urban VIIL, in 1639, is 
referred to.*^ But his bull was only against enslaving the 
western and southern Indians. Likewise Benedict XIV. 
is cited. II But his bull was intended for the suppression of 
Indian slavery in Brazil, Paragua, &c. 

All these popes denounce the slavery of the poor Amer- 
ican Indians in no measured terms. Why ? Slavery was 
complained of by the Jesuits as a monstrous barrier to the 



* Bower, vol. 1, p. 183. Also Herman, ad an, 1051. 
t Ibid., vol. 7, p. 23. 

} Vid. Remusal. Hist, de Chippa fl. 3, c. 16. 

\ Bullarura. Pan. Diplo. Rom. Col. Tom. VI. P. I. and 11., p. 183, 
DCIV. 
11 Sanct. Dom. Nos. Ben. Pap. 14, Bull. Tom. 1, p. 44, XXXVII. 



44 



LETTERS TO 



conversion of tlie Indians to the church. It was found 
that if the church allowed the Indians to be enslaved by 
those of her own communion, the Indians would despise 
the church, and close their ears to her teacher-. There- 
fore the popes issued their bulls against their being made 
slaves. But not one specific bull was aimed at African 
slavery until that of Gregory XVI., in 1839. True, Ban- 
croft says, " Leo X. declared that not only the Christian 
religion, but nature herself cried out against the state of 
slavery."^ But why did not this pope with others exert 
the same efficient power in the suppression of African as of 
Indian slavery ? Why was the church allowed to buy and 
sell Africans, while it was not allowed to buy and sell 
Christians and Indians ? Why should five popes say to 
the barbarous Portuguese, " You, gentlemen princes of the 
church, may make war upon the unofi'endiug Africans; 
you may appropriate their kingdoms^ goods, and possessions ; 
you may reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, or 
destroy them from the earth ; you may take any of the 
Guineans or other negroes by force or by barter ?" Was 
it not because the church had become corrupt ? Was it 
not that popes had become presumptuous despots, assuming 
to dispose of rights that belonged solely to Almighty God? 
Such, sir, is the origin of negro slavery. The bulls of 
five pontifical desi3ots, assuming to annihilate eternal justice, 
and to break the moral bonds which bind the human race 
together in one brotherhood. This is the origin of your 
darling institution of negro slavery, — five bulls of five 
popes. Such is the basis — the primary foundation of your 
peculiar institution, you can find no authority beyond those 
bulls. You go to the bible, it is true, but not to support 
n£gro slavery. That knows no difference between the Ethe- 
opian and the Caucasian. If it sanctions any slavery, it 
sanctions the slavery of the white, — of native white Amer- 
icans, as much as the native black Americans. It is solely 
the authority of five despotic, corrupt popes, in the worst 
age of the church, that furnishes you specific rights to en- 
slave the children of Africa. It is authority granted in 
an age when the church had become a mass of corruption 

* Bancroft's Hist. U. S., vol. 1, p. 172. 



PRO-SLAVERY MTN. 45 

you must rely upon that for the support of your southern in- 
stitution. Abandon that and you have no other, but the 
second hand authority of the tory despotism of the Stuarts. 
Abandon that and you have no alternative but to confess 
yourselves, original tyrants, though humble imitators of in- 
famous popes and impious tories. 

But you cannot escape the odium that comes by the 
knowledge of the fact, that, negro slavery has no other spec- 
ific sanction but the bulls of five wicked popes, and the 
Stuart despots. 

Besides, sirs, reflect, that the same corruptions of the 
Romish church that allowed and sanctioned the slavery of 
the Africans, sanctioned other crimes, and that these forced 
the Protestant reformation. Reflect, that in justifying 
African slavery you are obliged to make use of popish so- 
phistries, against protestant principles. Protestantism is, 
legitimately, the declaration of human rights against popish 
despotism. Popish despotism established negro slavery. 
Protestantism, in denying the despotism of the popes de- 
nounces negro slavery. No man then, is a legitimate pro- 
testant who lends his sanction to this infomous system. 

When the reformation broke out, the protestants renounc- 
ing the rights of popish despotism, openly and boldly as- 
serted, what good men of the church had always asserted — the 
rights of human nature, and they denounced slavery. The 
same vicious power which had set up the institution of negro 
slavery had developed itself in those other forms of dis- 
gusting oppression which necessitated a revolution. Hence 
negro slavery in America is one of those putrescent remains 
of popish assumption which drove, with disgTist, the best 
men of the church to hurl their protests at the Vatican. 

The reformers, planting themselves upon the unchange- 
able law of right, denounced the injustice of oppression in 
words that shook the eternal city, and every despot's throne 
in Europe. The popes justified the tyrannical ordinances 
of the civil power. But Luther declared that " unjust vio- 
lence is by no means the ordinance of God, and therefore 
could bind no one in conscience and right to obey, whether 
the command came from pope, emperor, king or master."^ 

*Selden, com. 1. 18. 



46 LETTERS TO 

So was slavery denounced by Zumglius, the bold Switz. 
He considered that St. Paul oj^posed slavery in saying, — 
" but if thou mayest be free, use it rather."^ This noble 
Switz had a singular idea of the divine purpose of slavery. 
He looked upon it as the worst of punishments infiicted upon 
those who were so sinful as to allow themselves to he oppress- 
ed.i Sir Kobert Filmer, the arch tory, in the reign of 
Charles I. says, " Calvin squintecV'X so strongly towards 
the doctrine of the absolute equality of all men as to be one 
of the heretical founders of Genevan Republicanism. 
Bishop Jewell represents Luther and Melancthon as teach- 
ing the natural and equal rights of mankind, and the right 
to defend ones self by all righteous means against oppres- 
sion, as did David against Saul ; — that is " by avoiding the 
power of the tyrant,"^ and St, Augustine was quoted to the 
same purpose.ll Thus Protestantism would help the slave 
to regain his liberty by encouraging him to fly from his ty- 
rant. It can offer no aid to the oppressor. 

According to Selden (if I mistake not) Luther at one 
time was impressed that the gospel was opposed to civil 
government, as the latter appeared to be the enemy of hu- 
man rights and equal justice, and to be in a constant 
" struggle against doing justice to the subjects," and seemed 
" to labor wholly to amass power for enslaving mankind." 
Many other good men have been forced to the same con- 
clusion, from the same circumstances. Luther lived to cor- 
rect his mistake. He saw that tyranny is not government, 
but the assumption of the powers of it without its spirit — 
equal justice. He saw, as every good and wise man will, 
that legitimate government, is ordained of God for the 
sole purpose of protecting the absolute and common rights 
of mankind, and that whatever sets itself u|) in the name of 
civil government under whatever form, without this one 
grand purpose, is not a legitimate outberth from the deity 



*See Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, by John Lord So 
mors, PhiL ed. p. 134. 

fOpu^ Articulorum Art. 40 42. 

tSee Filmer's '• Patriarcha," 16S5, p. 5. 

^See Jewell's " Defence of the Apology," p. 16. 

1 August, in Ps. 124. 



PrvO-SLATERY MEN. 47 

through the people, but the bastard of Satan begotten up- 
on fear. 

The crime of enslaving the Africans was pursued bj the 
Portugues in their African dominions for about three quar- 
ters of a century before they commenced the importation 
of slaves to America to supply the Spaniards in Hispaniola. 
This infamous work commenced in 1508.=^ The soul of 
Charles V. revolted at the idea of reducing the " image of 
God" to the condition of a brute, and in 1540, under a no- 
ble incitement, ordered all the slaves in the American Isles 
to he set free. Lagasea the governor, obeyed, but soon re- 
turned to Spain with such a tale for the Emperor as in- 
duced him to consent to the re-establishment of this crime.! 
Gold is an argument which princes seldom oppose long. 
The French king shed some tears when some of his unprin- 
cipled aristocracy joined the Spaniards and Portugues in 
the barter of human flesh. He had the principle of man in 
him and it revolted at the thought of such a crime, but he 
gave way to other influences. 

, And here let me link two parts of the French chain in 
the matter of slavery, and show you at the same time the 
primal law of society in its warflire against this crime of 
crimes. I have shown that the principle that " all men 
are bornfree,''^ was that by which slavery in France was 
abolished. Now, it so happened that at the time negro 
slavery was introduced and established in the French colo- 
nies, contrary to the primary law of the French nation, 
she had quite sunk into a state of despotism. The kings 
had abandoned justice as the rule of civil power. They 
issued edicts permitting and sanctioning the trade in human 
flesh. They laid down their regulations with regard to 
this " property in man. "I This was at the moment when 
the infamous house of Stuart was crushing the liberties of 
England, and laboring to re-establish slavery through the 
British dominions. Contrary to the fundamental law of 
France, her kings, instigated by their corrupt lords, granted 

*Ander. Hist, comra. 6, p. 336. 
fBodin de repub. 1. 1, c. 5. 

X Two edicts to this effect in 1615, 16S5. Vid. Decis. Nouv. par. M. 
Denisart, Tit. Xegroes. 



48 LETTERS TO 

permission for the introduction of slavery into France 
from her American islands.^ 

The parliament of Paris had not lost all sense of right 
and propriety. It had the soul to make some resistance to 
this despotism, but not by very open measures. " They 
did consider," says Denisart, " that the edicts of the king 
for the introduction of slavery," " was opposed to the com- 
man law of the kingdom^'^ and therefore they ^^ refused to 
allow the edicts to be recorded.''^] 

Thus was it declared by the parliament of Paris, some 
four hundred years after Louis X. proclaimed that " all 
men are by nature born free," and therefore that slavery 
is unlawful — that involuntary bondage " was opposed to 
the common law of the kingdom." In spite of this, how- 
ever, the base and infamous men of the nation were deter- 
mined, under the sanction of the king's edicts, to bring in 
negro slavery. The friends of justice were, on the other 
hand, too vigilant and determined to allow it. Every case 
of a slave they could find, was brought to trial, and the 
judges decided in favor of the common law of society, the 
universal right to personal freedom! Tlius you see once 
more, sirs, that the personal right of every man to free- 
dom is the fundamental law of society — that slavery is 
opposed to the common law, and has been pronounced to 
be so by the highest authorities. 

I have already shown that the same law acted in England 
to the overthrow of slavery. The last cases of slavery 
were decided in the reign of Elizabeth^ and James I. II There 
were men who were now determined in England to set up 
the new slavery at all hazards. In order to eifect this, 
they found it necessary to overthrow the constitution, and 
to make a clean sweep of the fundamental principles of 
society. It had been attempted in the reign of Elizabeth 
to introduce slaves from Russia. H A lucky circumstance 



* This edict in 1716, another in 1778. Ibid, § 27. 

t See ]\I. Denisart, as aheady cited. 

X See Causes Celebres, Vol. 13, p. 492. Also Nouvelles Decis., par 
M. Denisart, Neg. 

§ See Sir Thomas Smith's Commonwealth, B. 2, c. 10. Dyre, 266, 
pi. 11.— 283, pi. 32. 

II Co Entr. 406, 6. Hughes' Abridgment, tit. Villen. pi. 23. 

i[ Rushworth's Hist. Coll., vol. 2, p. 468. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 49 

brought the case to light in a manner which gave triumph 
to freedom. 

A change, however, was coming over the English nation. 
The friends of tyranny at court sanctioned the introduction 
of slavery into the colonies; and under Charles I., a system 
of tyranny was developing itself for the absolute slavery ol 
the nation. The people were roused, and Charles lost his 
head for his despotism. This was but a momentary triumph. 
The means used by the Protector for preserving what had 
been gained, introduced another form of despotism. The 
friends of absolute slavery took advantage of it for regain- 
ing their lost power. They restored Charles II. to the 
throne, secured themselves in places of the government, 
and trampling upon the fundamental law of the realm, 
decided in the court of the king's bench in favor of negro 
slavery, the right of holding property in man.^ The infa- 
mous Jeffries was the leading spirit of this tory court. 
Hence this court of king's bench decided, " that negroes, 
being usually bought and sold amongst merchants, and 
being infidels,! there might be a property in them sufiicient 
to maintain the action, and judgment, nisi, was given in 
faVor of holdino: negro slaves in Eno-land. 

Thus under the worst despotism England ever knew, 
the same brutal power that set at defiance the rights of the 
English people, that trampled upon the liberties and laws 
of the nation, that murdered in cool blood the friends of 
freedom, was the first that attempted to legalize the new 
slavery in the British Kingdom, the first of the English 
nation to side with the popes in the sanction of the trade 
in human flesh. 

The English party of despotism received the name of 
tory, while that of France was called jacobin. Both were 
in secret league with the pope, and controled by the worst 
characters among the Jesuits. On the settlement of the 
southern colonies this school had the ascendency in Eng- 
land, except during the control of Parliament and the pro- 



* 2 Lev. 201, and 3 Keb. 785. Vide Hill. 29 Cha. II. B. E. Rot. 1116. 
This was an action of trover for 10 negroes. 

t This like the same in bulls of the popes was to hoodwink Christian 
people. 

5 



50 LETTEES TO 

tectorsliip of Cromwell, at which time great numbers of 
the tories came to America, and settled in \' irginia. Hence 
I find on comparing the present doctrines of your school 
with those held by the tories of that period respecting gov- 
ernment, the rights of man and slavery, that you occupy 
their ground. 

In the next letter I shall make this matter a little 
plainer. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 51 



LETTER YI. 

How terrible has been the contest between principle and 
lust in all ages of the world ! Yicious men, reckless of 
the laws of God, supremely devoted to their own passions, 
have rapaciously seized upon the rights of mankind, and 
plundered society of its unity and peace. To preserve any 
part of its existence, the civil organism has been forced to 
a bloody warfare, which has always ended in the death of 
the old form. 

Strange that, in the nineteenth century, when every man 
has the history of the world before his eyes, and a thou- 
sand travelers in the orient tell the same melancholy tale 
of the ruins of ancient nations, destroyed by despotism, 
and whose desolations forewarn America of the deadly 
effects of slavery — strange, in view of this, that there should 
be a party in this new world so corrupt, so base, as to 
plunge the people into that terrible contest so often and 
so fatally repeated in the old world ! 

Upon whom rests the fearful respsibility of the war 
upon which America has now entered ? Who is the 
aggressor ? Society is bound to preserve itself It can 
exist only by virtue of the " Higher Law." That law you 
scorn and trample upon. You make war upon legitimate 
government, dethrone justice uproot the fundamental prin- 
ciples of sociy, and overthrow the defences and super- 
structures of freedom. Why this onslaught? What is 
your purpose ? Is it not that you may enslave the nation ? 
Is it not that you may preserve an accursed system of bon- 
dage in which you already pride yourselves as masters ? 
Is it not that you may extend to infinity the despotic power 
you already find yourseves in possession of? 

I have shown the pro-slavery school of every age to 
have been at wdr with society, and I have shown so far. 



52 LETTERS TO 

the filial results of their triumph. It has been seen that 
whenever and wherever your principles have prevailed, 
civilization has been destroyed, and anarchy, corruption, 
civil war and barbarism have followed. Liberty, sirs, is 
the sister of virtue, the banishment of the one is the loss 
of the other. 

It is self-evident that justice is the basis of all legitimate 
governments, whatever be their form. This is recognized 
even in the government of the Hindoos. " When justice," 
says the laws of Manu,^ " having been wounded by 
iniquity, approaches the court and the judges extract not 
the dart, they shall be wounded by it." " When justice is 
destroyed by iniquity, and truth by false evidence, the 
judges who basely look on without giving redress, shall 
also be destroyed." " Justice being destroyed will destroy ; 
being preserved will preserve. Beware, judge ! lest 
justice being overturned, overturn hath us and thyself." 
" A king who inflicts punishment on such as deserve it 
not, and inflicts no punishment on such as deserve it, brings 
infamy on himself, while he lives, and shall sink when he 
dies, to a region of torment." 

According to the fundamental law of the Hindoo people, 
slavery could have no legal existence among them. The 
learned commentator on the voyage of Nearchus, has con- 
cluded, that among the East Indians there was no slavery 
properly so called, though the people were divided into 
castes.t Alexander, the Great Robber, was the first to 
institute slavery in India. He condemned whole commu- 
nities of people to perpetual bondage. t 

All noted writers on China agree that slavery had no 
existence among that people till a modern date, and that it 
is even now mostly of a voluntary character ; involuntary 
servitude being a violation of the fundamental law of the 
empire. 

The primal law of India declared that " what is given 
hy force ^ and all other things done by force, or against free 
consent, is pronounced void.^^§ This was an eternal prohi- 

* Sir William Jones' Works, vol. 3, p. 299. Inst. Hindoo Law. 

t See Mitford's Greece, vol. 8, p. 426. 

I Ibid. 

§ Sir William Jones' Works, vol. 3. Inst. Hindoo Law, § 168. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 53 

bition of involuntary bondage. This law is of very ancient 
origin. The nearer we approach the primitive period of a 
nation, the less evidence do we find of slavery. Tradition 
in the age of Herodotus preserved the memory of a time 
when slavery was unknown in Greece.^^ Sparta broke 
loose from law, and as a baud of rol)bers enslaved the 
Helots; and Pliny says of them, "they were the first to 
invent slavery in Greece.! 

The universally acknowledged right of self-defence, is a 
universal acknowledmient of the unrighteousness of sla- 
very. St. Germain said, " Every man hath right and title 
to have what he hath righteously, and of the right-wise 
judgment of the first reason ivhich is the eternal law"t 
Against this law, prescription, statutes and customs may 
not prevail, and if any be brought in against it, they be 
not prescriptions, statutes nor customs, but things void and 
against justice. And all other laws, as well the laws of 
God in regard to the acts of men, as others, be grounded 
thereupon."^ 

So St. Augustine said, " In temporal laws nothing is 
righteous nor lawful, but that the people have derived to 
themselves out of the Law Eter)ial.''\\ 

But the pro-slavery school in every age of the world 
have been at war with this " Law Eternal." You, sirs, 
have set up this infimous claim in America — that you 
have a right to establish a legislation in defiance of justice, 
at war with human rights, destructive of liberty, and over- 
whelming the nation with beastly servitude. You claim 
the right to drag America from freedom, justice and broth- 
erhood into slaver}^, anarchy, and civil strife ; from civili- 
zation and Christianity into barbarism and the blackest 
heathenism. " Every good law," says St. Bridget,ir " is 
ordained to the health of the soul, and to the fulfilling of 
the laws of God." But you would curse the land with 
despotism, and slavery in the name of law. You would 



* Herodot. lib. 6, p. 137. 

t Nat. Hist. lib. 7, c. 57. 

i Doct. et Stud. D. 1, c. 

§ Ibid. 

II Free Arbit. 1. 1. 

^ Lib. 4, c. 129. 

5=* 



54 LETTERS TO 

set up Satau as the god of America, and enact vice into 
virtue, and establish iniquity by statute. " Every man's 
law," says Canerer,^^ " must be consonant to the law of 
God. And therefore neither the laws of princes, the com- 
mands of prelates, the statutes of commonalities, nor the 
ordinances of the church, can be righteous or obligatory, 
unless they be consonant to the law of God." 

Had the pro-slavery school in England prevailed as the 
same school prevailed in Greece and Rome, that nation 
would long before this have been plunged into loathsome 
barbarism. The law of nature by which all men are born 
free, was not only recognized in the common law of the 
English realm, but it ever had a strong party to sustain it ; 
men who were ready to die in its defence. How many 
martyrs sacrificed their lives to sustain it ? " This law of 
nature,''^ said the highest judges of England, " is a part of 
the law of England."! And " whatever is necessary and 
profitable for the preservation of the society of man is due 
by the law of naturey% 

In the fifth year of the reign of Edward YL, of England, 
an attempt was made by the corrupt aristocracy, to create 
slavery by legislation. Parliament went so far in this 
path of infamy, as to pass an act enslaving vagabonds for a 
term of years,§ and as a penalty for acts of violence in 
resisting, or in revenge, the miserable creatures were to be 
reduced to perpetual slavery, or murdered. II This barbar- 
ous enactment created a powerful excitement throughout 
the whole kingdom. It was a violation of the natural law 
of the realm. It trampled upon the common law of society. 
Nor would the people allow its execution. The judges 
knew they could not sustain its execution. Not an impar- 
tial jury could be found that would not pronounce against 
it. Nor would the people allow it to remain on the statute 
book. Two years after its enactment, the king prorogued 
parliament, and they, acting under the special instructions 

* As quoted by St. Geiinain. Vid. Doct. et Stud. D. 1, c. 4. 

t See Coke's 7 Eep. p. 12. 

J Ibid., p. 13. 

§ Vid. Statutes at Lame. vol. 9. Ap. p. 143-4. 

11 Ibid. 



PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 55 

of their constiiuents, declared that " the act concerning 
idle persons and vagabonds, in certain cases, to be made 
slaves of, &c., shall be from henceforth utterly re- 
pealed, made frustrate, void, and of none etFect.""^ 

It was thus that the English people beat back the 
attempts of the bloated aristocracy to re-establish domestic 
slavery among them. They would not have even vagabonds 
made slaves of. " It could not have been compassion for 
the culprits that excited this aversion to the law," said 
Hon. Wm. Pinkney in the House of Delegates of Mary- 
land, in 1789, alluding to this odious enactment, in his 
masterly speech against southern slavery. " The spirit of 
the people," he adds, "could not brook the idea of bondage, 
even as a penalty judicially inflicted. They dreaded its 
consequences ; they abhored its example ; in a word, they 
reverenced public liberty, and hence detested every species 
of slavery." "The general voice of the nation demanded 
the repeal of this slave statute of Edward YI."t and it was 
repealed. 

England always had two opposite political schools, the 
one pro-slavery ; the other, the " Higher Law," or liberty 
school. The former opposed the charter of rights, and 
embraced every opportunity to trample it in the dust. They 
consisted of the most corrupt and unprinci]. ad, proud and 
overbearing men of the nation. This party gained the con- 
trol under the bloody Stuarts. They were determined, as 
already shown, to establish slavery. Under Charles IL, 
they had gained a decision from the judges on the king's 
bench, in favor of chattel slavery. They advocated the 
d(^spotism of the king. Speaking of them, John Locke 
said : " In this last age, a generation of men has sprung up 
amongst us, that would flatter princes with an opinion that 
they have a divine right to absolute power. To make way 
for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natu- 
ral freedom, whereby they have as much as in them lies, 



* Ibid,, p. 155. 

t See the speech of Hon. William Pinknej, in the ^Maryland House 
of Delegates, in its session in November,' 1789. In this speech the 
spirit of whig fathers against slavery is seen. 



56 LETTERS TO 

exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and 
opj^ression.""^ 

These men were at first called Cavaliers, and then re- 
ceived the name of Tories — an appellation by which a band 
of robbers in Ireland vrere known at that time. It was 
applied to the cavaliers, as they advocated pro-slavery doc- 
trine — the right of their party to rob and enslave their 
fellow-men. Our good whig fathers gave the same dis- 
tinguishing title to the pro-slavery school during the Kevo- 
lution. 

The English tories published several works in support of 
their pro-slavery principles ; to which you seem to be 
largely indebted, sirs, for your political doctrines. The 
most notorious of these works were those of Sir Robert 
Filmer — such as his " Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed 
Monarchy," and his " Petriarcha." The latter was for 
some time circulated in manuscript, and was carefully ex- 
cluded from the eyes of the opposite party on account of 
the execrable character of its doctrines. It was finally 
discovered by one of the noblest among the friends of free- 
dom — Algenon Sidney,! who immediately set himself to 
work to expose its infamous libels upon human nature. 
For this labor the noble Sidney was condemned by the 
same judges who sanctioned the trade in Africans, and was 
cruelly murdered upon the block. | 

This tory " Patriarcha " of Filmer, commences by 
denying the grand principle I have all along shown to 
have been recognized in every nation and in every age of 
European history, as the fundamental law of legitimate 
society and government, namely ; that " all men are by 
nature free born," and " have an inalienable right to their 
inheritance." " Since the time that school divinity began 
to flourish," says rilmer,*^' " there hath been a common 
opinion maintained as well b}' divines, as by divers other 
learned men, which affirms that mankind are naturally en- 



* Locke's Works, vol. 5, p, 214. 
t See the Life of Sidney, and his Works. 
X Trial of Sidney. See his Life. 

§ See " Patriarcha," or the Natural Power of Kings, by Sir Robert 
Filmer, Bart. 2d, Lond. 1685, c. 1. 



PRO-SLAVERT MEN. 57 

dowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at 
liberty to choose what form of government they please, and 
that the power which any one man hath over another was 
at first bestowed according to the discretion of the multi- 
tude," and that " the people have power to punish, or de- 
prive the prince of all regal power if he transgress the 
laws of the kingdom." 

The latter principle had been sworn to by all the kino's 
of England, down to the reign of the Stuarts.^ The Enc- 
lish constitution embraced it.t It regarded every man as 
having the absolute rights of man. It was the basis of 
English association. Its grand aim was '• the protection of 
every individual in the enjoyment of those absolute rights 
which were vested in them by the immutable laws of na- 
ture."! 

The pro-slavery, or tory school, found this natural sys- 
tem in their way. They could not establish despotism by 
these fundamental principles. Xor had they any hopes of 
establishing a system of slavery that would remain perma- 
nent, so long as the minds of the people were possessed of 
the idea that all men were inheritors of equal rights and 
liberties, and that no one portion were born to rule over 
the rest. It was necessary, therefore, to strike down this 
principle of natural liberty and equality. Hence says the 
arch-tory, Filmer, " The desperate assertion whereby 
kings are made subject to censures and deprivations of 
their subjects, follows as a necessary consequence of that 
former position, of the supposed natural equality and. free- 
dom of mankind^ and liberty to choose what form of gov- 
ernment it please. § 

Many writers before him " had," he said, " bravely vin- 
dicated the rights of kings in most points," but none had 
gone so far as to make war upon the fundamental laws of 
society in order to maintain their position. "All of them," 
says Filmer, " when they came to the argument drawn 



* •• Statute? of the Realm " of England, vol. 1, p. 16S. Kelhara Prel. 
Dis. Laws Wm. Con£;.— Hale's Hist. C. Law.— Crab's Hist. Eng. Law. 
— Ecliard's Hist, of England. 20 Edwd. 3d. 

t See Blackstone's Commentaries on the Eng. Constitution, b. 1, c. 1. 

1 Ibid. 

^ Filmer's Patriarcha, ch. 1, § 5. 



58 LETTERS TO 

from the natural liberty and equality of viajikind, with one 
consent admitted it for a truth unquestionable^ not so much 
as once denybirj or opjjosing it ; whereas," said he, " if 

THEY HAD BUT CONFUTED THIS FIRST ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLE, 

the luhole fabric of this vast engine of popular sedition would 
have dropped down of itself .''■^ 

In what manner did the arch-tory now attempt to " con- 
fute" this first principle of society ? Why, he first calls it 
" erroneous," and then asserts that it sprang from the Devil 
in the Garden of Eden, when he tempted ouf first parents. 
Then he asserts that God made the mass of mankind 
slaves, and ordained the cavaliers or tories to be their 
masters, and the king the supreme, absolute master. This 
is the sum of his argument to overthrow the eternal law of 
equal right. Still he displays a great deal of tact and ap- 
parent learning. He, like all tyrants and abettors of legal 
robbery, makes great use of the " Sacred Book,''^ and would 
make appear that God took immense pains to write the Bi- 
ble, on purpose to sanction the despotism of kings and 
slavemasters. 

This work of Filmer contains all the arguments which 
are now advanced by your school in support of the 
RIGHTS (?) of slavemasters. Nor is it possible to support 
slavery without denying those fundamental principles of 
government which the tories denied, and without asserting 
the same doctrines of despotism which they asserted. The 
same positions which sustain the assumed rights of the 
slavemaster, sustain the assumed rights of tory lords, and 
tyrant kings, and corrupt popes. 

Nor did these tories fail to receive the aid of doctors of 
divinity in promulgating their new political creed. There 
was Dr. Laud, who answers to your Dr. Lord. And then 
there was Dr. Sibthorp, who sits well beside your Dr. South - 
side-view. And then there was Dr. Manwarring, who is an- 
swered by Dr. Man-stealer. Dr. Man-war-ing, by the way, 
was a notorious character under Charles I. He had the 
honor of preaching before the king, and of supporting this ty- 
rant by libeling human nature. His sermons were published. 



* Filmer's Patriarclia, ch. 1, § 6. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 59 

wlierein lie declared " that tlie king is not bound to ob- 
serve the laws of the realm concerning the suhjecfs rights and 
liberties^ but that his royal will and command, in imposing 
loans and taxes, without common consent in Parliament, 
obliged the subject's conscience, upon pain of eternal dam- 
nation ;" that " they rebelled against the laws of God, if 
they refused to comply, and were guilty of impiety, disloy- 
alty and rebellion."^ The Doctor, in taking this position, 
was not cunning ; he was really committing treason against 
the constitution and government of the realm, and exposed 
himself to the penalty of the law. The Commons, there- 
fore, called him to account under the charge of attempting 
to overthrow the government, by asserting the right of the 
king to enslave the people and rob them of their property. 
On his being proved guilty, the Commons published a de- 
claration against him, in which they re-assert the inherent 
rights and liberties of the subjects of the realm, as an estab- 
lished law of the kingdom, which no king had right to over- 
throw.! The foolish Doctor, for attempting to subvert this 
fundamental law, was sentenced to the fine of a thousand 
pounds, imprisonment, suspension and disgrace as a doctor 
of divinity and as a preacher of Christ, and to the burning 
of his sermons by the common hangman. This was a very 
mild penalty. It was sufficient, however, to bring the un- 
fortunate man to his senses. He confessed his crimet be- 
fore Parliament, and was finally pardoned. <j> 

The tories, in pushing forward their purposes of enslav- 
ing the people, roused the latter to take up arms in self- 
defence. The nation was plunged into a civil war. The 
king and his party were defeated. The former lost his 
head, and great numbers of the latter emigrated to Ameri- 
ca, and settled in Yirejinia. These tories brought with 
them to A^irginia all their love of monarchy, of Filmerism, 
of mastership. They despised labor, looked with contempt 
upon the laborer, and, what was a very natural result, they 
sought to make others their slaves, in order to find support. 



* See Rushworth's Hist. CoU., vol. 1, p. 423. 
t Ibid, p. 593. 
X Ibid, p. 605. 
^Ibid, p. 636. 



60 LETTERS TO 

Men of the same school had already set up slavery in the 
colony under the flivorable regards of the Stuart despotism, 
notwithstandino; it was in violation of the laws of the moth- 
er country, and a palpable breach of the law of nature — 
the rights of man. 

The South, from the beginning, represented toryism, be- 
ing settled by tories, and ruled by tories at " home" and 
in the colonies. Hence the doctrines now held by the rul- 
ing men of the Southern States are identical with those ad- 
vocated by Filmer, the arch-tory, and the real founder of 
the tory school. 

You are thus forced, like the worst school of English 
tories, to wage war upon the legitimate principles of soci- 
ety and government. You, as they, pretend that a " com- 
pact" — a bargain — is binding, which requires as a condi- 
tion the rebellion of the people against Eternal Justice. 
You pretend that you have derived power by a compact to 
make slaves, not only of Africans, but of the whole people 
of the United States. Did the tories of England, in the 
worst days of tyranny, ever pretend to a more dangerous 
power over that nation? 

As your doctrine with regard to the rio;ht of .enslaving 
men is the same with that put forth by your progenitors in 
England, I shall, in the next letter, answer you with the 
arguments of the old English whigs. 



PRO-SLAVEKY MEN. 61 



LETTEE YII, 

I KNOW not by what principle the legislative power of one 
nation has better right to enact injustice than that of 
another. The fundamental law of all nations forbids such 
claim. Our fathers in the revolution denied it to parlia- 
ment. Are we not bound to deny it to Congress ? It 
was always affirmed that parliament had no right to make 
slaves by enactment, or to sanction slavery. Can you tell 
from what god or demigod Congress has derived such 
authority? " If there be such a power in the decrees and 
commands of fools," said Cicero, " that the nature of 
things is changed by their votes, why do they not decree 
that what is bad and pernicious shall be regarded as good 
and wholesome ? Or why, if law can make wrong right, 
can it not make bad good ?"^ " Those who have made 
pernicious and unjust decrees, have made any thing rather 
than laws."t 

The slaveholders of Rome opposed this primal principle 
of all nations. They labored to legalize slavery. The 
tories of England, under the Stuarts, exerted themselves 
to the same infamous purpose. They contended it was in 
the power of government to enforce oppressive measures. 
Milton met and overthrew their execrable assumptions. 
He exhibited the fundamental law of the nation ; showed 
that it had been sacredly held even by the early Saxons. 

" Our ancestors," said he, "have conveyed this doctrine 
down to posterity, as the foundatmi of all laws, which like- 
wise our lawyers [not the pettifoggers] admit, that if any 
law, or custom, be contrary to the law of God, of nature, or 
of reason, it ought to be looked upon as null and void."t 

* De Leg. 1, 17. f Ibid. 

X Miltons Prose Work?, vol. 3, p. 307. " Bracton and FIe4-a," says 
Milton, " both refer to this tnily royal law of King Edward" the Con- 
fissor. 

6 



62 LETTERS TO 

This " law of laws " — this " Higher Law," it is impos- 
sible to abolish. It is coeval with society and government. 
You can rebel against, and you can subvert government by 
doing so. In this war upon society and the rights of man, 
you take sides with all the tyrants of antiquity — you iden- 
tify yourselves with the jacobins, the tories, under the 
Stuarts, and under George III. 

How can government be founded in justice, and yet 
have the right to enact measures against justice ? This is 
like asking how a man can be a Christian, and have the 
right to overthrow Christianity. Has the Almighty given 
a title to Congress to enact injustice, when He has denied it 
to the parliament of England, " What the parliament doth 
shaU be holden for nought, whenever it shall enact that 
which is contrary to the rights of 7iatureJ'^ That, sirs, is 
what Lord Coke acknowledges to be the fundamental law 
of government — the constitutional principle — the safe- 
guard against injustice — tyrinny, slavery. But your 
school would hiss it into contempt. You sneer at it — 
you call it " Babel-building. "t 

Does not every well-informed lawyer know, that " there 
is no necessity to obey, where there is no authority to or- 
dain."! There is no power in Congress to ordain unjust 
measures under any pretext. Law, to be law, must be 
just. Injustice is opposed to law, destructive of law, and 
" whatever is destructive of law, cannot itself be law, for 
then the law would be sole de se.""^ " The legislative power 
is limited by, and subordinated to, the law of natural jus- 
tice. If it exceed its limits its acts are no more, as to 
right and authority, than if the same were by a private 
society against the will of the whole community ; as to 
honor and good faith, it is much worse. "II " Against the 
law of reason, neither prescription nor statute, nor custom. 



* See Proeme to 2(i Inst. Also, Sharp's People's Eiglits, p. 236. 
Also, Leg. Riv. Vin. G2. 

t This is the language of that sage man, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in his 
letter to Dr. Adams, of Boston, and the Dr. in his " South side view," 
favors it. 

X Dav. 69, and 10 Co. 76. 

§ Judge Atkins, 221. 

y Lord Abingdon's Thoughts. See also Loft's Elements of Universal 
Law, 173. 



TRO-SLAYERY MEN. 63 

can prevail ; if any such are hroiight against it, they are not 
prescriptions^ statutes, or customs, but things void and against 
justice J^^ 

These, sirs, are not tlie declarations of wild and ignorant 
enthusiasts, but of profound and learned civilians — men 
who had made law and government the diligent study of 
life. They are the declarations of government itself, the 
decision of judges. 

The old whigs, both of England and America, at the 
period of the American Revolution, opposed the tones 
with the like authorities against the usurpations of parlia- 
ment. The Massachusetts General Assembly, in the year 
1764, in their petition to the king, took this position against 
the oppressive acts of parliament, and sustained it with 
numerous citations of authority.! Thus Judge Hobart 
had decided that " An act of parliament made against 
natural equity, would be void; for jure nature sunt immu- 
tabilia,"! — the law of nature is immutable. This was pro- 
nouncing the Law of Nature, to be the fundamental law of 
the land, against which no statutes could be allowed. The 
petition of our whig fathers gives an overwhelming amount 
of other authorities to the same purpose, and instances 
where this primal law had been formally recognized by 
parliament.^ 

And Otis himself in his masterly work multiplied other 
authorities in abundance, and gave cases wherein " the 
common law controled the acts of parliament, and some- 
times adjudged them to be utterly void. "II Thus when an 
act of parliament is against common right and reason, or 
repugnant or impossible to be performed, the common law 
shall control it and adjudge it to be void."*I[ " This doc- 
trine,''' says the Massachusetts Memorial to the king, " is 



* Doct. et Stud, edition, 1668, p. 6. See also Cod. Lit. 96. 

t See Appendix to Otis' rights of the British Col. 

± Hob. 87. 

§ Tren. 12. Jac. Day, v. Savage, S. C. and P. cited Arg. 10, Mod. 
115; Hill. 11; Ann C. B. Halt. c. 9, 12; Mod. 687, 688: Hill. 13, W. 3, 
B. R. in c. of cit. Lond. v. Wood. 

II See Rights of the British Colonists, p. 73. 

i[ And tiierefore 8 E. 3, 30. T. Tregor's case, W. 2, cap. 28, and Art. 
Sup. Chart. 9, Sec. 8 Kep. 118, Hill. 7, Dr. Bonhain's case. 



64 LETTERS TO 

agreeable to the Law of Nature and Natio?is, and to the 
divine dictates of Natural and Revealed Religion.''''^ 

This is what jou impiously call " Babel-building," as if 
government is not bound by the eternal law of right. 
George III. sneered at it, and his tory ministry, and the 
tories in parliament, but every whig knew that the -' Higher 
Law" was none the less binding for all that. Nor did 
they flinch when the hour came to maintain it with more 
than mere words. 

Now, sirs, it is a principle universally acknowledged 
among all authoritative writers on law, that slaver^t is con- 
trary to natural law, and cannot by any possible form of 
legislation be legalized. It is certain that if " by the law 
of nature all men are born free," which even the civil as 
well as the common law maintains, you may not attempt 
to legislate in favor of slavery without committing treason 
against government. 

Montesquieu, than whom there never was one better ac- 
quainted with the laws of all nations, after showing that 
slavery is opposed to the law of nature, says, ' ' Nor is sla- 
very less opposite to the civil law than to that of nature."! 
Why ? Because, sirs, the civil law of all nations assumes 
that justice alone is the basis of law. And therefore that 
whatever is unjust is unlawful, and, because civil law to 
bind ail, must be be assented to by all. All men are pre- 
sumed to assent to be governed by justice, but no man can 
be presumed to assent to be governed by injustice. Hence 
the civil law has no power to bind a slave. " What civil 
law," asks Montesquieu, " can restrain a slave from running 
away, since he is not a member of society."1^ 

As " every man is born with a right to freedom to his 
person, which no other man has a power over,"'^ and as 
" the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in 
the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which are vested 
in them by the immutable laws of nature,"ll it is impossi- 
ble for any civil society to attempt to protect a few men 



* See Appendix, as before, p. 73. 

t Spirit of Laws, b. 15, c. 2. 

X Ibid. 

§ See Locke on Civil Government, b. 2, c. 16, § 190. 

Jl Blackstone's Com. b. 1, c. 1. 



FRO-SLAVERY MEN. 65 

in robbing others of the enjoyment of their absolute rio-ht 
of freedom, without abrogating its own authority, and 
committing suicide. To attempt it would be assuming 
"absolute arbitrary power," and "absolute arbitrary power 
cannot consist with the ends of society and gOTernmeut."^ 

These are established principles never denied in any 
civil society, but by robbers, assassins, and the general 
enemies of society, that "justice must be denied to no 
man ;"'t that "justice must be done to e}:erij man," and 
" neither denied, nor dela3'ed, not sold to any man;"l that 
"it is better to endure all adversities than to assent to one 
evil measure ;'"^ that though " property is valuable to a 
man, it doth not constitute the value of a man;"il that "a 
bad custom or usaoje is to be abolished.''^ 

It is true, the Algerines were governed by no such prin- 
ciples as these, but every one knows that Algiers was not a 
civil state, but a band of robbers. They opposed the legi- 
timate principles of civil society, for the same reason you 
oppose them, and for no other. Men who do not live by 
robbery, are not afraid of justice; they have no cause for 
that. The tories under the Stuarts opposed these princi- 
ples, but every one knows for what reason : they were the 
friends of kingship, lordship, mastership, tyranny, sla- 
very robbery. They sought to overthrow the fundamental 
principles of the civil state, and to build up an absolute 
despotism ; they made it their chief aim to restore the 
old feudal slavery. That was what caused the civil war, 
under Charles I. When they had secured the control 
under James II., how clearly was it seen that they had 
doom-d the nation to the most dissjraceful and insufferable 
bondage. But your principles are identical with theirs. 
True, you advocate the divine rights of no single tyrant; 
you do worse than that, you labor to sustain the tyranny of 
fifty thousand tyrants. You do not, it is true, endeavor to 
impose upon us a living despot, under the title of king, but 



* Locke as above, ch. 11, § 137. 
t Jeiik. Cent. 176. Priii. Leg. ct. Jlquit. 47. 
i .Jeiik. Cent. 93. 
§ 3d Inst. 23. 
II Cod. Lit. 124. 
il Leg. Ri. Viu. 32, 33, 160. 
0* 



66 LETTERS TO 

you labor to impose upon us what will be more disgraceful 
and impious for us to submit to — a dead despot, galvan- 
ized, under the name of " the Federal Constitution." 

It is natural, sirs, you should desire a king after your 
own liking. Were you certain of establishing a live one, 
whose despotism would sustain the claims of slaveholders, 
you would, if possible, effect that impious work tomorrow. 
Nor would you be obliged to change your principles to 
accommodate yourselves to the new form of despotism. 
All you assert now, is the same that Filmer, the arch-tory, 
concocted for the support of the Stuart despotism, in Eng- 
land. And the same arguments the best whig writers in 
those times advanced against your school in England, can 
be urged with equal power against your present school in 
America. 

You assert that the Federal covenant or compact, guar- 
antees slavery, sanctions property in man. Locke answers 
you, " This is a power which neither nature gives, for it 
has made no such distinction between one man and another, 
Tvor compact can convey^^ So the eminent Cudworth, 
" Covenants without natural justice, are nothing but mere 
words and breath, and therefore can they have no force to 
oblige;'"! for "none can be obliged in duty to obey, but 
by natural justice."! Is it not self-evident that ''what- 
ever is iniquitous, can never be made lawful by any author- 
ity on earth ; not even by the united authority of kings, 
lords, and commons ? for that would be contrary to the 
eternal laws of God, which are supreme. "*i> 

But you reply that " slavery is not iniquitous," that it 
is " a divine institution," and therefore may be legalized. 
So said the English tories. But Locke answered, " He 
who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, 
does thereby put himself into a state of war with him," and 
thus " bein2; the ao;ressor, forfeits his own freedom ;" " for 
having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the 



* Locke on Civil Government, b. 2, cli. 15, § 172. 
t Cud. Int. Syst. Uni.,2 ed. v. 2, p. 894. 
X Ibid, p. 896. 

§ Decliriition of the Peoples' nat. riglits, a fundamental principle of 
the British Constitution, &c., p. 10. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 67 

rule between man and man, and the common bond whereby 
human kind become united into one fellowship and society, 
and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, 
and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust 
ends upon another, he revolts from his own kind to that of 
leasts by making force, which is theirs, to be his rule of 
right ; he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the 
injured person, and by the rest of mankind, who will join 
with him in the execution of justice, as upon any other 
wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have 
neither society nor security."^^ 

Thus the slaveholder is set forth as a criminal, as even 
a " wild beast,"" a " noxious brute'' — as one who declares 
war against the common law of mankind, and instead of 
being protected in his dangerous warfare by government, 
is one " with whom mankind can have neither society nor 
securi9i/.-^ 

So the excellent Sidney, who was murdered for having 
written a book refuting your impious doctrines, said, " that 
all mankind are created equally free, is a truth planted in 
the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all that 
have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disapproved by 
none, but such as, through wickedness, stupidity, or base- 
ness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of 
beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward 
shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they 
have learnt from their master, the devil. "t 

Nor did they consider that the slaveholder alone was 
criminal in this case ; but the magistrate who attempted 
to enforce oppressive laws in the name of government, was 
a criminal, and placed himself on the side of the devil in 
rebellion against God and society, and was to be resisted." 
" Though I am unwilling to advance a proposition," says 
the excellent Lord Somers, " that may sound harshly to 
tender years, I am inclined to believe, the same rule which 
requires us to yield obedience to the good magistrate, who 
is the minister of God, and assures us that in obeying him 



* Locke, Civ. Gov. b. 2, ch. 15, § 172. 

t bidney oa Government, vol. 1, ch. 2, sec. 1, T[ 1. 



we obej God, does equallj oblige us noi to oh^j \\xo@e 

"■femake ih: ^/ ^ " , ' " - ' -7; le;<t m obey- 

lag them we . _ -. .- :j do,"* 

This* yiaii "will say, pertiapev applies oaly to a magistrate 
"^^ — - " ' law and the constitii- 
:_--.- ... . . -- aoB refer to a siave- 
sanctiODing o&eer and execiitor, or ooe appointed to ex©- 
c ' ' ^" -' ' - . : is sar ' by 
i^ . - - , " -It mock ^:ab- 
Hshed tiie preseau lorm of federal gOTenmieat granted 
powers t "' ^ ' " "' - :t the part of ty- 
rants, an . ^ . - .e. You say that 

our fathers, in other words, created a eoastitution irhidi 

I : ? . -^ what Locke and Cud worth 

say of saeh an instrument of compact, and I will add 
L'. ^ -^ ■>" words : "-^ It is not in the choice ; •* : of 

a-/ ^ :/. " says he, -'at their erecting tJi. ...^i of 

^Temmeat, to enlarge and extend the rower of thoee^ 
v': ."■'.■'-- '■ ".ts and 

!:•- r -^ :_ ;:„:._- .._.. . . _^ . magis^ 

trates in the charter of Nature and Kerelation."! 

T: ' ' ' ' . '^ - -" T a^re bom 

jree, : : ._ . .: - ■_,--- .- : ^ .:r« equal f 

l^t "justice shall be done to etery man;^ that justice 
5'- " ' - \ ' ' - "" : is there to be found any 
1^_.. _. .-• : -J of society, whose funda- 
mental laws do not recognize these self^vident principles. 
Itw-- ■ -/' V -■ ■ r-rplein 17>*T-^, 

to e^-- r_ - -;.;:-_ -- _- : j at war with 

sjOTemment itself. They could bind the nation by no sa^ 
compact -' " - " - '. ' ' - - .:i€» 

to be ! — :.- ^ .... -.. ..._ _..: by 

natural justiee.^f 

I: ' - " ' .- "' :: assert, as yoii do, 

diat . ._ .^: : ... ; :. .. ..::^._: :_e very governnient 

whi;!h they labored to establish ; that they bound us to 



* JodgmffEj: of Wljcie KiEgdi3nas and Saiiaiis, •f 111. 

t Iblji. *5" 1* 

T Cuidvrcirdi loi. SyaL Ijaiv^ toL 2, p. S96. 






HE 









70 LETTERS TO 

" If our fathers promised for themselves to become 
slaves, thej could make no such promise for us," said Mil- 
ton to the Jacobite Salmatius ; " we shall always retain 
the same right of delivering ourselves out of slavery, that 
they had of enslaving themselves to any whomsoever.'"^ 
" That right which nature has given the people for their 
own preservation, how can you affirm has been given to ty- 
rants for the people's ruin and destruction ?"t " Since 
therefore the law is chiefly right reason, if we are bound to 
obey a magistrate as a minister of God, by the very same 
reason and the very same law, we ought to resist a tyrant, 
and a minister of the devil. "I 

To what purpose, then, do you declare that the people 
of the American States, in 1787-8, bound themselves by 
a covenant to sustain slavery — to dispose of the absolute 
right of their brethren in a manner wholly at war with 
government and society ? Every one knows, who has any 
understanding of the principles upon which civil society is 
based, that the people had no such power. If they at- 
tempted it, they assumed to themselves rights which it 
would be impossible to suppose any but God himself could 
claim. " The people," says Chancellor Somers, " can no- 
wise interpose in the disposal of the rights which belong 
unto God, and which he hath incommunicably reserved to 
himself; nor can they confer those measures and degrees 
of authority upon those whom they elect and advance to 
magistracy, which God hath antecedently precluded, the 
one from bestowinsr and the other from receivino;."9 

As civil society is based upon the law of nature, it is 
clear, as already shown, that " no human law is binding 
which is contrary to the laws of nature."ll To suppose it 
would be a palpable contradiction. Hence, as all authori- 
ties concur, and the judicious Hooker emphatically affirms, 
" Human laws must be made according to the general laws 
of nature. "IF 



*^ IMilton's Defence of the People of England. 

t Ibid. Milton's Works, vol. 3, p. 216. 

tlbid, p. 275 

§ Judo-inent of "Whole Kingdoms, "J 1. 

II Ibid, II 14. 

^ Hooker's Eccl. Pol , 1. 3, sec. 9. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 71 

To admit your monstrous assumption, that our fathers 
attempted to bind their children by a system of injustice 
to become man-thieves, robbers, pirates, " brute beasts," 
" blood hounds " — would be bad enough ; but for us to ad- 
mit that they could thus bind us, is impious — blasphemous ; 
for it is to suppose that the Infinite God is so tyrannical 
and unjust as to hold posterity bound to perform the un- 
just oaths of their progenitors. To admit that we are thus 
bound, is to admit that we can be and are, legal slaves to 
plantation masters. 

Your system thus makes us blasphemous slaves, if we 
submit to it. It renders justice impossible to be support- 
ed. Your government is not legitimate, then, but a bas- 
tard, a tyranny, which we are bound to reject and over- 
throw. This is just, it is right, it is a solemn duty ; for, 
as Lord Somers says, " that is just which doth destroy ty- 
rannical government ; that is unjust which would abolish 
just government. '-"^ You, as the tories in England, abol- 
ish just government, and set up an oligarchal despotism, 
which denies human rights and crushes the soul out of the 
nation. 

Government, as it is ordained of God, has its bounds, 
its unalterable and eternal principles. It can have no 
right to do wrong, even if all the people and their rulers 
should resolve they had, and should swear to maintain so 
contradictory and diabolical a position. " These," says 
Locke, " are the bounds which the law of God and nature 
have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth, 
in all forms of government : they are to govern by proinul- 
gated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, 
but to have one rule for rich and poor — for the favorite at 
court and the countryman at plough ; they are to act for 
the good of the whole people."! Hence, as " every man 
is born with a right to the freedom of his person, which 
no other man has a power over,"| it would be the absolute 
destruction of civil society, and the assumption of the right 
of a band of robbers, to attempt to sanction one portion of 



* Judgment of ^^^lole Kingdoms and Nations, T 35. 
t Locke on Government, b. 2, ch. 11, ^ 142. 
X Ibid, cli. 16, § 190. 



79 



LETTERS TO 



tlie nation in depriving others of their just right ; for, as 
Cud worth sajs, " the bond of bodies politic can be none 
other than natural justice — something of a common and yuh- 
lic, of a cementing and coagulating nature in all rational 
beings.""^ Injustice segregates, dissociates, completely 
breaks up a nation ; destroys government, barbarizes man- 
kind, and renders society impossible. The interest of the 
slaveholder is partial, selfish, and at war with the rights of 
mankind, at war with justice; hence, at war with legiti- 
mate government and society. How impossible is it, then, 
for a people to favor such a class of men without precipitat- 
ing their own ruin, without allowing that humanity have no 
absolute rights ; and thus allowing themselves no absolute 
defence against themselves being made slaves. 

Salmatius, the French Jacobite, who wrote in defence of 
the tyranny of Charles I., asserted that the constitutional 
principles of England gave despotic powers to the king. 
This is like what you assert of the American Constitution. 
Milton's answer to Salmatius is an answer to you. 
" Though it were possible for you," said Milton, " to dis- 
cover any statute, or other public sanction, which ascribes 
to the king a tyrannical power, since that would be repug- 
nant to the will of God, to nature, and to right reason, you 
may learn from that general and primary law of ours, that 
it will be null and void. But no such right of kings has 
the least foundation in our law."t Nor is there any law 
of the American nation by which slaveholders have the 
right they claim for themselves in the constitution. There 
is no American law by which the Legislature can enact in 
favor of slavery, no more than in favor of adultery, rape, 
forgery. 

The power of legislators is limited by the laws of na- 
ture. Hence Milton, speaking of the law by which the 
representatives of the people are bound, says, " They are 
limited by the law of nature only, which is the only law 
of laws truly and properly to all mankind fundamental ; 
the beginning and end of all government ; to which no par- 

* Int. Syst. Univ., b. 1, ch. 5. 

t Milton's Prose Works, vol. 3, p. 268, 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 73 

liament or people that will thoroughly reform but may 
and must have recourse."^ 

The basis o^ public liberty is the same as that of the ^r- 
sonal liberty of every man. That basis is Natural Law. 
Your doctrine of the constitution strikes at this and un- 
dermines the whole foundation of civil freedom. You de- 
ny all guarantee to the rights of the nation, and claim to 
yourselves the sole mastership, and the absolute slavery of 
the people to your oligarchy of slaveholding aristocrats. 
" He that oj^pugns the public liberty," says Sidney, " over- 
throws his own, and is guilty of the most brutish of all fol- 
lies, while he arrogates to himself that which he denies to 
all men."t 

I have shown, in former letters, that it had ever been 
recognized by all legitimate forms of society and govern- 
ment, that " by the Law of Nature all men are horn free" 
and that this law constituted the fundamental basis of all 
legal organizations of men from the earliest periods. " This 
law," says Cicero, " is the same eternal and invariable law, 
given at all times and in all places, to all nations ; because 
God, who is the author thereof, and has published it himself^ 
is always the sole master and sovereign of mankind. Who- 
ever violates it, renounces his own nature, divests himself 
of humanity, and will be rigorously chastised for his diso- 
bedience, though he were to escape what is commonly dis- 
tinguished by the name of punishment."? Have you not 
seen the punishments Eternal Justice brought upon Rome 
for slaveholding ? The same unbending law of the Al- 
mighty holds amenable at the dread bar the acts of the 
American people in respect to the just rights of three and 
a half millions of their own brethren. The liberties and 
rights of the whole people of America, black and white, 
are indissolubly united. That which sinks and destroys 
the one part, sinks and destroys the whole ; that which ex- 
alts and secures one, preserves and ennobles all. 

Greece, I have shown, had her noble sons who exposed 

* Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. — Mil- 
ton's Prose Works, vul. 3,' p. 403. 

t Discourses on Government, vol. 1, p. 330. 

X De Repub., lib. 3, apud Lactant, Inst. Div., lib. 6, cap. 8. 

7 



74 LETTERS TO 

the injustice of slavery, and warred against its direful re- 
sults. Isocrates took the side of right, and maintained the 
paramount obligations of the " Higher Law." The so- 
phists sneered at him, but he stood firm, and declared to 
the slaveholders, and all other classes of Grecian robbers, 
" He who prefers injustice to justice, and makes his sover- 
eign interest consist in depriving other men of their right- 
ful claims, is like to those brute creatures that are caught 
by the bait ; the unjust acquisition flatters his sense at 
first, but he shall find himself involved in very great 
evil."=^ Ah, sirs ! how great, how immense was the evil 
that afterwards involved Greece for this one sin of slave- 
holding — this greatest of all national curses ! 

. * Isoc. Orat. de Perrautat, 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 75 



LETTER VIII. 

You oppose the doctrine of the preceding letter in regard 
to legislative power. So did the tories of England. The 
doctrine is based on the Law of Nature, and cannot be 
abrogated. The tories made war upon it, and labored to 
overthrow society in England in the time of the Stuarts. 
In the reign of George III., the same impious school gained 
the control in the councils of the British nation, and at 
once commenced a crusade against liberty and right. The 
first purpose was to enslave the whig colony of Massachu- 
setts, to break down her independent spirit, and cripple 
and stultify her energies. They had no idea that the 
Southern colonies w^ould join with the North on whig 
grounds to oppose tory despotism, as the Southern colonies 
had been made up mostly of tory elements under the Stu- 
arts. They knew that the Virginia House of Burgesses 
had been extremely strong in its tory principles under the 
Stuarts, and had passed resolutions in favor of that execra- 
ble despot, Charles I., and had secretly acknowledged the 
sovereignty of his banished son, (afterwards Charles 11.) 
They knew that the tory settlers of Virginia had always 
hated the colony of Massachusetts on account of her lib- 
eral principles and her free institutions. 

Massachusetts had opposed slavery as "a vile and odious 
course." True, in 1637, in the reign of the tyrant, Charles 
I., Massachusetts authorities were over persuaded to dispose 
of some captive " savages " by sending them to the West 
Indies. These were exchanged for " negroes and other 
merchandise,^^ which were brought into the colony. They 
were the first slaves in New England.^ One of these was 
a captive African princess. This fact became known 
through the colony. It excited great disgust when it was 



* Winthrop's Joiirnal. See Col. Amer. Stat. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 200. 



76 LETTERS TO 

heard bow the brutal man who bought her treated her 
virtue. The people were aroused against the infamous 
institution. The whig friends of Massachusetts in the 
mother country protested^ against the introduction of sla- 
very into the puritan colony. The Legislature of the col- 
ony then took in hand the abolition of the iniquity they 
had introduced, and passed laws forbidding any species of 
involuntary servitude.! 

Shortly after this, a number of African captives were 
landed in the colony and sold. The fact was brought to 
the knowledge of the general court, whereupon they re- 
solved that, " conceiving themselves bound by the first 
opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying 
sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress 
for what is past, and such a law for the future as may 
sufficiently deter others belonging to us, to have to do in 
such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all 
good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, 
with others unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, 
at the charge of the country, for the present, sent to his 
native country of Guinnea, and a letter with him of the 
indignation of the court thereabouts, and justice thereof"! 
Shortly after. Providence plantations and Warwick, passed 
acts against slavery.^ 

Thus while anti-slavery principles — the fundamental 
principles of society — were being carried out in the North- 
ern colonies by English whig settlers, the Southern colo- 
nies, settled mostly by tories, were fastening upon the 
South that detestable system of robbery and oppression 
which is now sinking it beyond recovery. Almost at the 
instant that the people of Massachusetts, through the gen- 
eral court, abolished the slavery which had but just been 
introduced, the tory lords of England established a consti- 
tution for the province of Carolina, in which they impiously 
declare that every free man of the colony shall possess 
" absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of 



* Muss. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, v. 9, p. 2. 

t Coll. Amcr. Stat. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 200. 

j Ibid, vol. 1, p. 201. 

§ See Updike's Hist. Narraganset Church, p. 170—174. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 77 

whatever opinion or religion,"''^^ whether heathen or Christ- 
ian. At this time Sir John Yeamans, a tory, with his 
tory followers, settled in Carolina with a body of African 
slaves."! 

Shortly before this, and under the special favor of the 
Stuart despotism, slavery had been introduced into the 
Catholic colony of Maryland, and under tory influence the 
Maryland Assembly enacted, consonous with the arbitrary 
and unjust rule at home, that " the people of the colony 
consisted in all the Christian inhabitants excepting the 
slaves.''''^ These were not considered people^ even though 
they might be Christians. They were a new species of 
animals — i?7<;/e-Christians, not Christian people. 

The professed purpose of the tory lords in establishing 
the colony of Carolina was " the propagation of the gospel 
among the heathen."! They were very zealous for religion. 
They had filled the prisons of England with such heretics 
as Richard Baxter, who had denounced slavery,! and John 
Bunyan and Alleine. The first act of missionary labor in 
Carolina was the introduction of negro slavery ; the sec- 
ond was by King Charles himself — a gift to the knightly 
slavemaster-missionaries, of twelve pieces of cannon and 
military stores.^ Tories from England flocked to this 
colony. They " fomented the spirit of discord among the 
Indian tribes, and promoted their mutual wars, for the pur- 
pose of obtaining slaves, by purchasing the captive Indians,!! 
and bartering; them in the West Indies for Africans. 

Thus was the gospel promoted by the tories among the 
heathen. 

The pirates, too, came in for a share. This tory colony 
became a house of refuge to them, and a shelter from the 
storm. These high sea murderers and robbers were spe- 
cially flivored by the robber king. Patronized in the 
beginning, by him, knighted indeed, and honored for their 



* (iraliam's Hist of the United States. 
t Bovtmin, Oldmixon, Chalmers. 

* Gniham's Hist. U. S. 
t Ibiil. Also Bacon. 

X Clarksoirs Hist, of tlie Abolition of the Slave Trade, vol. 1. 
\ Graham. 
II Ibid. 

r* 



78 LETTERS TO 

episcopal robberies, they were recommended by the royal 
favor to the kind regards of the favorite tories of Carolina. 
The ports of the province were thrown open to them. 
They were furnished with supplies of provisions in exchange 
for their golden spoils. The tory governor and all the tory 
inhabitants — who were indeed the principal inhabitants, 
were in full fellowship with these pirates. And this " mis- 
sionary christianizatiou of heathen " was carried on for a 
great many years.=^ 

The gospel of Christ, however, was scarcely at all 
preached in the colony till after the year 1695. The first 
time the ordinances of religion were administered, was in 
1696, by seme puritan missionaries sent into Carolina from 
Massachusetts.! There were no school-houses, no meeting- 
houses — no legitimate society, no government of impartial 
justice. Everywhere was robbery, murder, ignorance, 
yulgarity, toryism, slavery. 

It is hardly to be wondered at then, that the tory lords 
under George III., had no expectation of rousing the oppo- 
sition of the southern colonies when they, in connection 
with the king, struck at the old whig liberty of Massa- 
chusetts. 

The contest commenced in 1761, in the town of Boston, 
in the old court-house, in the masterly speech of James 
Otis against the Writ of Assistance. " Then and there," 
says John Adams, " American Independence was born."| 
In opposition to troy despotism, both that of the lords of 
England, and that of the slavemasters, he proclaimed the 
natural freedom and equality of mankind. He boldly 
asserted the rights, not only of the white, but of the black 
man. He denounced African slavery, and urged such 
high-toned principles, as made Mr. Adams tremble when 
he thought of them.^ 

Slavery hnd stolen in upon the puritan colony by eva- 
sion of the law, and by the aid of tory influence, so that at 
the moment Otis was speaking, slaves were advertized for 

* See Graham. 

t Ibid. 

j See Tudor's Life of Otis. 

§ Ibid. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 79 

sale in the Boston newspapers. Otis denounced the sys- 
tem as wholly illegal and iniquitous. It was contrary to 
the English law ; and no court could side in its favor. The 
blow struck by this fearless patriot, roused the minds of 
others. 

Then came the news of the stamp act. The spirit of 
alarm and of earnest inquiry flew abroad. It was seen 
that a regular system of oppression had been determined 
on by the tory power of the mother country. The question 
arose, how shall we remonstrate ? What shall we say ? 
We must declare that the supreme power has no right to 
make slaves of us. We have the right of British subjects. 
We are under the protection of the laws of the realm. 
But it ia impossible to assert the rights of any class to the 
exclusion of others. Our colonial charters make no differ- 
ence between black and white colonists. If we appeal to 
the protection of the just laws of our ancestors, we cannot 
deny the protection of the same laws to all who are born 
under them. English law cannot be allowed to protect the 
white, unless it be allowed to protect the black ; for the 
law knows no color. All who are born in the Eno;lish 
colonies, are born under the obedience, power, faith, liege- 
alty, or liegeance of the king, and are natural subjects and 
not aliens, they are free born, and not slaves de jure^ and 
if slaves de facto, it is contrary to law. 

" The king is bound to protect the liberties and rights 
of his subjects, [black or white,] as much out of therealmof 
England as within it ;t and his protection and government 
is general over all his dominions and kingdoms as well in 
time of peace, by justice, as in time of war, by the sword. I 
Allegiance and protection are inseparable. There is a 
mutual bond of obligation.'^* ' By the law of nature all 
men are bora free.' The judges of England have declared 
* the law of nature to be a part of the law of the realm. 'il 
The king is bound to protect all his subjects in their birth- 
rights. In declaring, then, that the colonists are free 

* Coke's 7th Rep. Calvin's case, pp. 5, 6. 

t Ibid, p 8. Also Regist. fol. 25, b. 26. 44, E. 3. 

% Colve's 7 Rep., p. 9. 

k Ibid, p. 5. 

U Ibid. 



80 LETTERS TO 

Britisli subjects, entitled to all the rights of any other of 
the king's subjects, slavery is declared illegal. For the 
law of nature is paramount. ' It was before any judicial 
or municipal law in the world ;"^ it was before slavery, 
and slavery was opposed to it. ' But the law of nature is 
immutable,' and, as the law of the British realm, it unal- 
terably requires the protection of all the natural rights of 
British subjects."! 

These legitimate principles of the English government 
were now to be trampled upon once more by the tory lords 
and the foolish king, they had secured to their interests. 
Blind and fool-hardy, they pressed their measures of des- 
potism, as you, sirs, are at the present moment pressing 
your odious plans of tyranny, upon the American people. 

In 1764, Massachusetts passed resolutions in which the 
rights of all the colonists were declared, without respect 
to rank or color. And James Otis, under the sanction of 
the- Massachusetts House of Kepresentatives, published his 
work on the Bights of the British Colonies, in which it 
was declared that "the colonists are by the 'taw of nature'' 
free born, as indeed all men are, white or black. "I " Nor 
can any logical inference in favor of slavery," said Otis, 
" be drawn from a flat nose, or a long or short face."§ 
Speaking of a certain class of slaveholders, he says, 
" They can, in general, form no idea of government, but 
that which, in 2)erson, or by an overseer, the joint and sev- 
eral proper representatives of a Creole and of the devil, is 
exercised over ten thousands of their fellow-men, born 
with the same right to freedom, and the sweet enjoyments 
of liberty and life as the unrelenting task-masters, overseers, 

and planters The law of nature was not of man's 

making, nor is it in his power to mend or alter its course. 
Its disobedience can never be with impunity even in this 
life."ll 



* Coke's 7 Eep., p. 9. 

t 20 H. 7, 8. Fortesque, c. 13. Acts of Pari. 10, E. c. 5, and 11. R. 
2, c. 1. 14 H. 8, c. 2, &c. 
% See this work referred to, p. 29.j 
\ Ibid. 
II ibid, pp. 29—31. 



PROSLAYERY MEN. 81 

There was not an intelligent lawyer in the colonies, who 
did not at once perceive that, in advocating the rights of 
the British subjects in America against the claims of the 
tories of England, the equal rights of every native-born 
colored man, though held a slave, was also declared. The 
Rhode Island whigs, and those of all the northern colo- 
nies, in taking part with Massachusetts in 1764, assumed 
this ground. In Connecticut they declared^ '^ all the in- 
habitants," " all the people of the colonies and plantations 
in America, are really, truly, and in every respect under 
the protection of the British constitution;" that "protec- 
tion and subjection go together;" "that no man owes 
allegiance to a power that will not regard his inherent and 
inalienable rights ;" that "as all the subjects of the king 
["black and white] are bound to obey, so all the king's sub- 
jects are to be protected in the natural rights that belong to 
them ;" that " as all the people of the colonies are the sub- 
jects of the British government, so the British constitution 
an^ laws guarantees the protection of the lives, liberties, aiid 
properties of all Nor can any class or the inhab- 
itants OF TUE COLONIES BE EXCLUDED, as the charters granted 
not liberty to one, and doomed others to be slaves, but 
declared that ' all the subjects shall have and enjoy all the 
liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects equal 
with those within any of the dominions of us, [the king,] 
our heir or successors, to all intents, constructions and 
purposes whatsoever, as if they and every one of them were 
born within the Realm of England J^ ' 

This made it illegal for any person born in the colonies, 
or within the realm of England, to be held a slave by the 
colonists, no matter what was his color, for the law had no 
knowledge of color or the shape of the nose. Hence the 
town of Boston, in their resolutions passed in 1764, de- 
clared that all the natural rights, guaranteed to the sub- 
jects in the kingdom were guaranteed to the colonists, 
without respect to color, by the colonial charters. Hence 
James Otis, in behalf of Massachusetts, declared that " the 



* See " Reasons why the British Colonies in America should not be 
charged Avith Internal Taxes, &c. New Haven, 1764." 



82 LETTERS TO 

same right that allows of the slavery of one, sanctions the 
slavery of all, seeing that the rights of all are equal. "^ 
And furthermore said he, 'that the colonists, black and 
white, born here^ are free-born British subjects, and enti' 
tied to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth, not 
only manifest from the provincial charters, from the prin- 
ciples of the common law and acts of Parliament, but from 
the British Constitution, which was reestablished at the 
revolution [that overthrew the despotic Stuarts in 1688] 
with a professed design to secure the liberties of all the 
subjects in all generations."! 

Now the revolution in England, in 1688, in overthrow- 
ing the tory despotism of the 6tuarts, ought to have been 
followed in the colonies with a revolution overthrowing 
slavery, inasmuch as slavery had been introduced into the 
colonies by the tories, under the tyrannical Stuarts, 
against English law. 

But, as already shown, the tories had settled the South- 
ern colonies, and slavery was their darling offspring, which 
they would cherish, though it destroyed them, because 
they would rather die than labor for an honest livelihood. 

The tories under George III,, in forcing upon the colo- 
nies oppressive measures, forced the true men of America 
to look into the fundamental principles of the nation. 
There they found the old law of nature as the eternal basis 
of legitimate government. There they found that " by this 
immutable law all men are born free," and have an equal 
title to the protection of the civil power. There they found 
that slavery was at war with the charters of rights, and 
that they cuuld lay no claim to the protection of the Eng- 
lish constitution without allowing the equal and inalien- 
able rights of those held as slaves. 

Hence, St. George Tucker, a Virginia professor of law, 
and a judge in the General Court, declared that " slavery in 
the colonies was a departure from the principles of the 
common law " — " a measure not to be reconciled to the prin- 
ciples of the Law of Nature, nor even to the most arbitrary 



* Rights of the British Colonists, p. 33. 
t Ibid, p. 37. 



PRO-SLAYER Y MEN. 83 

establishments in the English government at the period" of 
the Stuarts, when it was introduced ; for " absolute slave- 
ry, if it ever had existence in England," said Judge Tuck- 
er, " had been abolished long before. ""^ 

So Judge Wilson, of Pennsylvania, a revolutionary pa- 
triot, declared " slavery" to be " unauthorized by the Eng- 
lish common law ;" and that " it is repugnant to the prin- 
ciples of Natural Law, that such a state should subsist in 
any social system ;" that, " in the enjoyment of their per- 
sons and their property, the common law 'protects aTl.^^\ 

This was tested in Massachusetts, according to Dr. Bel- 
knap, t a cotemporary. Several cases were tried, accord- 
ing to this writer, and, " on the part of the blacks, it was 
pleaded, that the royal charter expressly declared all per- 
sons horn or residing in the Province to be as free as the 
king's subjects in Great Britain ; that by the laws of Eng- 
land no man could be deprived of his liberty but by judg- 
ment of his peers." The latter, however, referred to ques- 
tions of crime, and not to the trial of question of property 
in man. Judgment was rendered in favor of freedom. 

Shortly after the favorable decision of the j&rst case in 
Massachusetts, in 1769, the same question came up in the 
case of Sommerset, in England. When it was decided that, 
according to English law, negro slavery was illegal, and 
that it had no respect to the color of a man ; that a slave, 
in short, could not legally exist under the British Consti- 
tution. 

In view of all this, South Carolina, in 1774, " resolved 
that His Majesty's subjects in North America [without re- 
spect to color or other accidents] are entitled to all the in- 
herent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects 
within the kingdom of Great Britain ;" " that it is their 
fundamental rights that no man should suffer hi his person 
or property icithout a fair trial, and judgment given by his 
peers, or by the law of the land." Furthermore, " that no 
power had right to take the rightful property of another, 

* See Examination of the Question on the Common Law, by St. G. 
Tucker. 

t See Judge Wilson's Works on Law, vol. 2, p. 488. 
j See Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. 4. 



84 LETTERS TO 

without his consent gi\^en personally, or by his representa- 
tives.'"^ 

The same resolutions had been passed over and over 
again in all the other colonies, North and South. This 
was, up to the year 1776, common whig ground of union 
between the colonies and the mother country : the author- 
ity of Magna Charta, the English common law, the Natural 
Law as the basis and fundamental law of the British realm, 
and the natural rights of the colonists, as acknowledged 
and guaranteed in the colonial charters. 

All of these, however, toryism (both in the mother 
country and in the colonies) trampled upon and kicked 
aside. For the tory denied the authority of justice and 
the Natural Law, and scouted the doctrine, that " by the 
law of nature all men are born free." 

The Southern colonies, in uniting with the North on 
fundamental principles of English law, declared the ille- 
gality of slavery. When the colonies were forced to 
abandon the protection of English law, being driven to this 
by the tories, who denied its authority and trampled upon 
the constitution, they were forced to plant themselves sole- 
ly upon the Law of Nature, and declare themselves free 
and independent. A 

In assuming this independent position, it was impossible 
to avoid adopting the Law of Nature as the fundamental 
basis of the nation. America could have effected nothing 
for herself on the platform of tory principles. It was 
toryism — pro^slaveryism — that was at war with America, 
and demanded her unconditional surrender. There was no 
alternative, but to surrender to slavery — to pro-slavery 
power, or to take anti-slavery ground — the law of human 
rights — and defend their position as best they could. 

Taking this ground of Natural Law, Southern slavehold- 
ers, who were sincere, would not only be ready to acknowl- 
edge the illegality and unrighteousness of slavery, but 
would condemn it, and be willing to adopt some certain 
method for its overthrow. 



* See Hist. Revolu. South Carolina from a British Province to au 
Independent State. By D. Ramsay, M. D. 1785. Vol. 1, pp. 18, 19. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN^ 85 

Hence, we find that, through the whole period of the 
revolution, and for several years after, not an instance can 
be found of a whig patriot justifying slavery. On the 
contrary, every one of them took occasion, in one form or 
another, to condemn this institution. 

In a political work, published in Charleston, South Car- 
olina, in 1784, the writer, in the very outset, declares that 
" such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, 
that it almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted char - 
acteristic of rationality. "=^ This noble whig writer advo- 
cated " that the Constitution [of South Carolina] should be 
framed on principles of equal freedom., in order that oligar- 
chal despotism might be prevented from assuming the eon- 
trol.t 

The tories however bore rule in that state. They were 
determined to perpetuate slavery. The few whigs who 
were true to principle were overwhelmed by the arts, cor- 
ruptions, and despotism of wealthy nabobs who had secured 
the power in their own hands. Licentiousness, ignorance, 
tyranny, and degrading bondage were the characteristics to 
be seen everywhere. 

Alluding to the unhappy state of things in that day, 
this writer says : " No man can be said to enjoy even the 
shadow of freedom in a state whose laws and police do not 
protect him from insult and injury. Licentiousness is a 
tyranny as inconsistent with freedom, and destructive of the 
common rights of mankind, as is the arbitrary way of an 
enthroned despot."! 

You, sirs, would do well to learn from this whig writer 
of South Carolina, the great mission of the American States. 
You will recollect that he spoke the sentiments of the true 
whigs of tfie Pvcvolution. " It has been too common with 
us " [of S. Carolina] said he, " to search the records of other 
nations, to find precedents that may give sanction to our 
own errors, and lead us unwarily into confusion and ruin. 
It is our business to consult their histories, not with a view 



* See Conciliatory Hints, &c., submitted to the Consideration of tlio 
Citizens of South Ci\rolina, by Philodemus, p. 5. 
t Ibid, p 27. 
Ilbid p. 32. 

8 



86 LETTERS TO 

to tread riglit or wrong in their steps, but in order to in- 
vestigate the real sources of the mischiefs that have befal- 
len them, and to endeavor to escape the rocks which they 
have all unfortunately split upon. It is paying ourselves 
but a poor compliment, to say that we are incapable of 
profiting by others, and that, with all the information 
which is to be derived from their fatal experience, it is in 
vain for us to attempt to excel them." 

The tories then pointed to Grecian and Koman slavery 
in justification of slavery in the American Bepublics. This 
southern whig would have them see that, slavery was the 
great rock on which those ancient Republics split. He 
would have them remember that the lessons of the past 
give a terrible warning to slave-holding despotisms. " If" 
said he " with all those advantages, together with the pecu- 
liar happiness of our present free, uncontroled, and, as it 
were, unconnected situation (such as no nation before us 
ever did, and probably none after us ever can enjoy); if 
with all these," said he, " we are incapable of surpassing our 
predecessors, we must be a degenerate race indeed, and 
quite unworthy of those singular bounties of Heaven, which 
we are so unskilled or undesirous to turn to our benefit." 

This was the great fact that was pressed horn A o the hearts 
of the true patriots of those times. They felt that in break- 
ing loose from all connection with European institutions — 
in becoming independent of the English government — in 
establishing civil institutions properly and truly American, 
every improvement should be made that the advantage of 
circumstances could allow. " The superiority of our condi- 
tion over that of other nations," said they, " is truly amazing. 
It seems as if the Almighty had intended the various revo- 
lutions and misfortunes of all other states for our particu- 
lar instruction, and then placed us in the only possible 
situation in which we could practically profit by it. Be- 
bre us, no people were ever so entirely relieved from the 
control of hereditary rulers and military force. Before us, 
none have ever been so free to associate upon terms of 
equality. All before us have been surrounded with 
neighbors who would have been ready to support the first 
usurper that should seize upon the reins of government. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 87 

In order to render such a condition of real utility to tlie 
people, it was necessary to provide for them a new world, 
out of reach of the interference of the rest of mankind. It 
is on us, and us only, that the great Ruler of the Universe 
has bestowed this great and wonderful blessing. To show 
our grateful sense of his beneficence, we should improve 
these happy circumstances to our own and the welfare of 
our posterity. We should set an example of prudence, 
justice, and generosity, becoming the characters of men 
who have made the noblest strufrorle in the cause of free- 

CO 

dom.'"^ 

The tories, or pro-slavery men, had no fellowship for these 
rational views. They lived only for themselves, and sought 
to turn government to their own account. Slavery was 
their darling institution ; and though it resulted in the en- 
tire destruction of society, the total subversion of govern- 
ment, and the overthrow of morals and religion they cared 
not, so long as it supported their luxuries. 



* See work above cited p. 33. 



88 . LETTERS TO 



LETTER IX. 

Two months and ten days after the Congress of 1776 
had declared it to be a " self-evident truth, that all men are 
created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the 
inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness," the Massachusetts House of Kepresentatives 
" Kesolved, that the selling and enslaving the human 
species is a »direct violation of the natural rights, alike 
vested in all men by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent 
with the avowed principles on which this and the other 
United States have carried their struggle for liberty even 
to the last appeal."^ 

This was the whig spirit of the revolution — it was 
the manner in which the whigs understood the grand 
movement of the nation. The tories who had stolen the 
livery of the whigs — who, in other word|| had assumed 
the name of whiggery, secretly favored slavery, and made 
use of every possible stratagem to defeat and overthrow 
the liberal policy and principles of the revolution. 

Hence, while the true whigs — the sons of Freedom — 
were laboring to destroy the institution of slaver}^ through- 
out the American States, the impious tories under the guise 
of moderate whigs, labored to preserve and establish this 
system of robber3^ It was through the influence of these 
false men, in the council of the Massachusetts General 
Court, that the above noble resolution was prevented from 
going before the world. 

Congress, in 1774, had made a unanimous and solemn 
agreement, upon sacred honor, " that they would neither 
import, nor purchase any slave imported, after the first day 
of December ; after which time " they agreed " wholly to 
discontinue the slave trade, and would neither be concerned 
in it themselves, nor would hire their vessels, nor sell their 



* See Coll. Amer. Statist. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 205. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 



89 



commodities or manufactures to those wlio should be con- 
cerned in it.""^ 

The tories of the Northern States united with those of 
South Carolina and Georgia to defeat this effort to suppress 
the slave-trade. Jefferson complained of this shameful 
disregard of the congressional agreement, and declared that 
South Carolina and Georgia " never attempted to restrain 
the importation of slaves," and refers also to " Northern 
brethren " who " had been pretty considerable carriers of 
slaves."! 

The tories in the North were anxious, as already ob- 
served, to preserve the institution of slavery. The men of 
this stamp in Massachusetts endeavored to prevent the 
introduction of that clause in the constitution, which de- 
clares the equal rights and liberties of humaiiity, because 
they knew that the whigs would make use of it for the 
abolition of slavery in the Bay State. 

A Constitution was framed and sent to the people in 
1778. This instrument, by the artful management of cer- 
tain influential tories, bearing the name of " moderate 
whigs," carefully left out the declaration of equal human 
rights, — the fundamental basis of civil association. The 
true whigs in the county conventions, exposed this trick, 
and the people rejected with scorn the miserable mockery 
which had been offered as a constitution. 

Other conventions were called, and at last, in 1780, a 
form of constitution was framed and adopted, that gave 
freedom to the slaves in Massachusetts. It is worthy of 
remark, that the same principle upon which the slaves 
became free in this state, was the same, almost in the very 
expression, with that declared by Louis X. of France, in 
1315, when he abolished slavery throughout his kingdom; 
namely, " All men are by nature free born" — "All men 
are born free and equal." 

But you would have it, sirs, that "Jack Frost abolished 
slavery in Massachusetts," and not the constitution, not the 
fundamental law of civil society. That will answer now 
for tories to say. Dr. Belknap, of Massachusetts, was 
written to in 1795 by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, inquiring 

* Am. Arch. 4 se., vol. 1. 
t Madison Papers. 



90 LETTERS TO 

in what manner slavery was abolished in the Bay State. 
Dr. Belknap answered, that it had been abolished by that 
article in the constitution which declared the liberty and 
equality of mankind, and that this very clause was incor- 
porated into the bill of rights for this express purpose."^ 
Furthermore, that the like clause incorporated into the 
New Hampshire constitution, three years after, was with 
the understanding, that all who were born of slave parents 
fi'om the time of the adoption of the constitution were born 
free."t 

Thus without legislation, but by the fundamental law 
of society, acknowledged and adopted by the people of 
these two JSorthern states, slavery was abolished. 

The same primal law was incorporated into every other 
American constitution, except into that of South Carolina. 
She was too essentially toryistic, or Filmerean to take this 
step. She adopted, through her delegates, however, the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence. And, 
moreover, on adopting a constitution, she did not, as she 
could not legally, incorporate any clause or word recog- 
nizing slavery, or the right of property in man. Such a 
step would have been too infamous in those days. 

I have said that the whigs of the revolution not only in 
declaring the principles of human rigi:^ in opposition to 
the infamous claims of the tories, but a^o in establishing 
the state governments, took great pains to develop and 
unfold, as the eternal foundation of civil institutions, the 
grand Law of Nature. All the writers on government 
trom the earliest periods, were ransacked, and all the 
writers on Natural Law. It was found that on no other 
point was there so universal an agreement as on this one — 
" that by the Law of Nature all men are born free," and 
that " by the Law of Nature all men are entitled to equal 
absolute rights." 

There was found a diversity of expression, it is true; 
but in the one fundamental law of liberty there was no 
variation. The tory writers under the Stuarts, and those 
of that period who favored the despotism of George III. 
constituted the only school that denied this law. 



* See Mass. Hist. Coll., 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 204. 
tibid. 



PRO-SLATEKY MEN. 91 

Biirlaniaqui had declared that '' Moral or natural lib- 
erty is the right which nature gives to all viank'md of dis- 
posing of their persons and property after the manner they 
judge most consonant to their happiness, on condition of 
their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and 
that they do not any way abuse it to the prejudice of any 
other man."^ 

The same was declared by Chief Justice Blackstone.t 
So PufFendorf affirmed that " the Law of Nature obliges 
us to hold all men equal with ourselves ;" and that " the 
Law of Nature is none other than the great rule prescribed 
by Christ himself of ' doing unto others as we would have 
them do unto us.' "1^ The "judicious Hooker" also de- 
clared the same principle in his " Ecclesiastical Polity'N^ in 
almost the exact words quoted above. The " learned Gro- 
tius" also, in his work on " Peace and War,"ll not only re- 
cognized the same principle as fundamental in civil associ- 
ation, but as absolute in morals, being a part and parcel of 
the immutable Law of Nature. This Higher Law — the 
foundation of all civil states — he found to have been uni- 
versally acknowledged by poets, orators, historians, philos- 
ophers and jurists in all ages. These he quoted, he said, 
" as witnesses whose conspiring testimony mightily 
strengthened and confirmed this point, since their discord- 
ance on almost every other subject showed that their unan- 
imity on the Law of Nature " — the Higher Law — " was by 
the influence of that Higher Law itself." It was this uni- 
versal agreement which established it as a Law of Nature 
in all intelligent minds. " When," says he, " several per- 
sons of diflerent times, in various places, maintain the same 
thins; as certain, such coincidence of sentiment must be at- 
tributed to some general cause." 

Then, referring to the numerous quotations he had made 



* Burlamaqiii's Natural and Political Law, vol. 1, c. 3, sec. 15. 

t Commen., vol. 1, p. 125. 

X See Pufteiulorf s Law of Nature and Nation?, Oxford cd., 1710, p. 
109. Puffendorf was a learned German civilian and historian, born m 
1631. Burhunaqui was a German civilian, born in 1694. 

§ Hooker was born in 1554:. 

II De Jure Belli et Piicis. Grotius was born in Holland in 1583 ; was 
one of the profoundest men of the age. 



92 LETTERS TO 

from writers of various times and nations on this point, he 
says, " Now, in the quotations before us, that cause [before 
referred to] must necessarily be one or the other of these 
two — either a just consequence drawn from natural princi- 
ples, or a universal consent. The former discovers to us 
the law of nature, and the latter the law of nations, ""^ 

So Home, in his Mirror of Justice, written about the 
year 1275, says "According to the Law of Nature all 
creatures ought to be free."t And Hughes, in his edition 
of the Mirror of Justice says, " Sure I am that every law, 
custom, usage, privilege, prescription, act of Parliament, or 
prerogative, which doth exalt itself above or beyond the 
.... Law of Nature, hath ever by the worthy sages of 
our laws been declared to be void. "I 

So the learned St. German, in the early part of the 16th. 
century, declared that this " Law of Nature, which is or- 
dained of God, may be called God's law united unto man's 
nature ; for what was the image of God in man .... but 
— lex primordialis — a primordial law exactly requiring and 
absolutely enabling the performance of duties of piety unto 
God, and of equity to men both in habit and art. Hence, 
according unto the opinion of most learned divines and le- 
gists : " Lex nature nihil aliud est quam participatio legis 
ceterna creatura ;" and according to others : " Lex natures 
est lumen ac dictum illud ratio7iis, quomnter bonum et ma- 
lum discernimusy^ 

In " America's Appeal to the Impartial World," pub- 
lished in Hartford in 1775, the Law of Nature is thus de- 
clared : '• Man hath an absolute property in, and right of 
dominion over, himself, his powers, and faculties ;" by that 
law he is " independent of, and uncontrolable by, any but 
Him who created and gave him his powers. And what- 
ever is acquired by the use and application of man's facul- 
ties, is equally the property of that man, as the faculties 
by which the acquisitions are made ; and that which is ab- 
solutely the property of a man he cannot be divested of but 



* De Jure Belli et Pacis, b. 1, c. 1. Barbeyrac ; Prel. Dis, § 14. 
t See Mirror of Justice, c. 2, sec. 28. 

X See Hughes' ed. of Home's Mirror of Justice, 1768. Address to the 
Header. 
§ Doct. et Stud. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 93 

by his own voluntary act.''=^ " Either all is our's, and 
nothing can be taken from us but by our consent ; or noth- 
ing is ours, and all may be taken without our consent. The 
right of dominion over the persons and property of others 
is not natural, but derived ; and there are but two sources 
from whence it can be derived : from the Almighty, who 
is the absolute proprietor of all, and from our 0Y;n free 
consent."! 

Neither the slaveholder nor the tory lords of England 
could show credentials for the first, nor could they show 
that they had derived any right to rob and enslave by the 
consent of those they were disposed to victimize. 

Nothing is more evident in American history than the 
fact, that, in establishing the nationality of America, the 
great and good men who took the leading part, recognized 
as the sole basis of the civil organization, the grand Law of 
Nature by which all men are entitled to freedom and equal 
rights — impartial justice. This appears in almost every 
act of Congress during the revolution, and in every State 
Constitution, from the extreme North to the borders of 
South Carolina. 

The patriots, in writing and speaking of the purpose of 
the great contest, referred to it, not as a defence of the 
rights of slaveholders, as you do now, but the " rights of 
Human Nature." When Gen. Washington and Gen. 
Charles Lee came to Cambridge, in July, 1775, the peo- 
ple's delegates congratulated them as " the defenders of the 
rights of human nature ; and they, in reply, acknowledge 
the compliment in the same terms. 

To Gen. Washington they said, " While we applaud that 
attention to the public good, manifested in your appoint- 
ment, we equally admire that disinterested virtue, &c., 
which can afford to hazard life, and to endure the fatigues 
of war, in defence of the rif/hts of manhind, and the good 
of our country." 

To this Washington replied : " In exchanging the en- 
joyments of domestic life for the duties of my present hon- 
orable but arduous station, I only emulate the virtue and 



* Page 5. 

t See the above noble work for mucli more besides. 



94 



LETTERS TO 



public spirit of tlie whole Province of Massacliusetts Bay, 
which, with a firmness and patriotism without example in 
modern history, has sacrificed all the comforts of social and 
political life in support of the rights of ma7ikind, and the 
welfare of our common country. My highest ambition is, 
to be the happy instrument of viTjdicating those rights. 

To the Hon. Charles Lee, the Massachusetts Congress 
thus addressed themselves : " Sir — The Congress of the 
Massachusetts Colony, possessed of the fullest evidence of 
your attachment to the rights of mankind, &c., do with 
pleasure embrace this opportunity to express, &c. We ad- 
mire and respect of a man who . . . engages in the cause 
of mankind, in defence of the injured and relief of the op- 
pressed." To which Gen. Lee replied : " Nothing can be 
BO flattering to me as the good opinion and approbation of 
the Delegates of a free and uncorrupt people. / was edu- 
cated in the highest reverence for the rights of mankind. 
... I thank you, gentlemen, for an address which does 
me so much honor, and shall labor to deserve it." 

In almost immediate connection with these addresses, we 
have an address of the General Congress to the army, in 
which the principles of pro-slavery men are held in detes- 
tation, and identifying the claims of the tory slaveholder 
with those of the tory ministry in England. " If," said 
they, " it were possible for men who exercise their reason, 
to believe [as none indeed but tori^ could] that the Di- 
vine Author of our existence intended a part of the human 
race to hold absolute property in, and an unbounded pow- 
er over, others, marked out by his infinite goodness and 
wisdom, as subjects of legal domination, never righteously 
resistable, however severe and oppressive, [which was the 
Filmerian or tory doctrine] the inhabitants of these colo- 
nies might at least require from the Parliament of Great 
Britain some evidence that this dreadful authority over 
them has been granted to that body. But a reverence for 
our Great Creator's principles of humanity, and the dic- 
tates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect 
upon the subject, that government was instituted to pre- 
serve the welfare of mankind, and ought to be adminis- 
tered for the attainment of that end." 

This is exactly the principle 1 have all along shown to 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 9§- 

have been recognized in every age as the fundamental prin- 
ciple of civil society, and which renders slavery impossi- 
ble in a legitimate society ; which renders it absolutely im- 
possible for legitimate government to sanction slavery, but 
rather makes it obligatory on government to abolish it, as 
at war with civil government, like mui'der, robbery, rape, 
and every other vice. 

The General Congress, also, in its address to the people 
of Ireland, recognized the grand principle of the American 
revolution as that of the " right of human nature." So in 
the address to the inhabitants of Great Britain, the same 
is brought to view ; and in the address to the inhabitants 
of Canada, Congress said : " When hardy attempts are 
made to deprive men of rights bestowed by the Almighty, 
when avenues are cut through the most solemn compacts for 
the admission of despotism ; when the plighted faith of 
government ceases to give security to loyal and dutiful 
subjects ; and when the insidious stratagems and manoeu- 
vers of peace [law and order, gentlemen,] became more 
terrible than the most sanguine operations of war, it is 
high time for them to assert those rights, and, with honest 
indignation, oppose the torrent of oppression rushing in 

upon them We, for our part, are determined to 

live free, or not at all, and are resolved that posterity 
shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into 
the world." 

Pennsylvania declared, through her delegates, that 
" mankind are, in their own nature, as independent of one 
another as they are dependent upon God ;" that " this lib- 
erty and independence is, therefore, a right naturally 
belonging to man, of which it would be unjust to deprive 
him against his will.""^ 

This language they adopted from Burlamaqui ; and fur- 
thermore, that, " upon considering the primitive state of 
man, it appears most certain, that the appellations of sov- 
ereign and subject, master and slave, are unknown to na- 
ture. Nature has made us all of the same species, all 



* See an Essay on the Constitntional PoAvers of Great Britain over 
the Colonies in America : with tlie Resolves of the Committee for the 
Province of Pennsylvania, and their Instructions to their Representa- 
tives in Assembly, Phil., 1774. Burlaraaqui's Principles of Pol. Law, 
vol. 2, p. 38. 



96 LETTERS TO 

equal, all free and independent of each other ; and was 
willing that those on whom she bestowed the same facul- 
ties should all have the same rio-hts.""^ 

The most abundant testimonies were cited by the whigs 
of the revolution on this point, against the tory doctrine 
of oppression. Thus Locke : " Though the earth, and all 
inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man 
has a property in his own person ; this nobody has any 
right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work 
of his hands, we may say, are properly nis."t 

So Lord Camden, in defending the rights of the Colo- 
nies, declared, " It is the Law of Nature that whatever is 
a man's own, is absolutely his own ; no man has a right to 
take it from him without his consent either expressed by 
himself or representative. Whoever attempts to do it, at- 
tempts an injury ; whoever does it, commits a robbery ; he 
throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty 
and slavery." 

Yet you, sirs, in this age, attempt to make us believe 
that our fathers intended to establish slavery and not lib- 
erty. You trample upon the sacred principles for which 
our fathers suffered. You scout and kick aside with con- 
tempt our free State Constitutions, and convert the Federal 
Government into a ruinous despotism. You mock at our 
fathers ; jo\x libel our institutions ; you overthrow trial by 
jury ', you chain our court-houses, and convert them into 
slave-pens ; and then, in derision, ^\x call us " degenerate 
Grreeks." You deny, with the oppressors of Europe, that 
all men are, by the Law of Nature, born free, and created 
equal ; and to support your system of robbery, you have 
converted the Federal Union into a slaveholding oligarchy. 
The people have felt your iron hand. It is enough. They 
are convinced that you, sirs, are their sworn enemies. You 
have roused them to battle for the right. They will know 
the truth, and the truth shall make them free. 



^ Ibid. This had been declared by Burlamaqui, of Geneva, in the 
forepart of the 18th century. 

t Locke on Civil Government, part 2, c. 5, § 27. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 97 



LETTER X. 

Your political school — the pro-slavery school of Amer- 
ica — is identical in doctrine with the worst school of Eno"- 
lish tories. The time was, when, in this country, there 
was no respectable man who dared openly advocate your 
execrable theory, unless it might be in South Carolina. 
The principles of the American Revolution were directly 
opposed to the doctrines you now maintain. This I have 
already shown. What the tories of the m.other country 
advocated you now advocate. True, you do not claim the 
right to tax colonies at a distance, but you do assert the 
right to impose odious and oppressive measures upon the 
free states ; you do claim the right, through the general 
government, to trample out and annihilate our free institu- 
tions ; you do pretend that whatever you can effect through 
the halls of legislation for strengthening the slave power at 
the expense of human rights, you have a right to effect ;; 
and we, miserable wretches ! " degenerate Greeks !" as 
you call us, are bound to submit. In short, there is not a 
fdndamental principle of the constitutions of the free states, 
you do not as a political school attempt to annihilate. 

Not only in your measures, but m your openly declared 
doctrines, you strike at the root of all free government. 
There is not a constitution north of Virginia, whose funda- 
mental principle is not the equal, absolute rights of human 
nature. But you deny the truth of this principle in toto. 
You call it a " chimera."^ You assert that mankind 
" never were equal " " nor was it intended," you say, " they 
ever should be."t You declare that the doctrine of the 
" natural liberty and equality of mankind," is a " general 
and radical error among political and moral theorists."t 
Calhoun in 1849 called this great truth, a lie. 



* Fletcher's Studies on Slavery, p. 407. f Ibid. 

J See letter from Henry A. Wise of Virginia to Dr. Adams of Boston 
The like repi-oach is cast upon this constitutional principle by Drs. Lord. 
Blagden and other pro-slavery or tory writers. 
9 



98 LETTERS TO 

In short, sirs, it is absolutely impossible for you tomain- 
tain pro-slavery principles without taking the impious 
course of the arch-tory, Sir Robert Filmer, and deny this 
fundamental principle of all legitimate society. It was a 
necessity for him. Why ? He could not support the de- 
spotism of the Stuarts without denying that grand doc- 
trine, which had always been held as the first principle of 
leo^itimate society, and which opposed itself as a barrier to 
tyranny and slavery. 

Filmer found, on hunting among old wi'iters, that this 
primal principle was advocated by the school-men, and this 
he brought up as a reproach against it. The whig Sidney 
thus answered him : — " He absurdly imputes to the school 
divines that which was taken up by them as a common no- 
tion^ written in the heart of every man, denied by none. 
" The school men were not fools. They could not but see 
that which all men saw, nor lay more approved foundations 
than that man is naturally equal, that he cannot be justly 
deprived of his liberty without cause."^ It is not strange 
that the man who was thus opposed to the tyranny of the 
tory party should be murdered for his defence of freedom. 
Your party, when in fall power, has in all ages murdered 
those advocates of freedom and equality who were honest 
and bold enough to oppose your infamous libels upon hu- 
man nature. 

If you will examine Algernon Sidney's and John Lock's 
criticisms upon Filmer's " Patriarc%i " you will see with 
what detestation those tory doctrines you advocate were 
then looked upon by the good and wise men of England. 
Think, sirs, whose company you are keeping in occupying 
the ground you do in opposition to the fiindamental law of 
society, and all legitimate government. You are with 
Charles I. and II. and James II. and George III. and the 
Duke of Buckingham and the detestable Archbishop Laud, 
the bloody Jeffries and Sir Robert Filmer ; nay, indeed, 
with all the execrable tories and tyrants of those periods of 
civil war, and robbery and murder. 

"Mankind," they declared, " were not created equal and 
free. The masses of the people were created slaves, and 
the remainder to rule over them."t So the tories under 



* Sidney's Discourses on Govei-nment, vcl. 1. p. 43. 
t See Lock od Civil Government, B. 1. c. 1. 



PEO-SLAVEEY MEN. 99 

George III. denied the eqnal rights of mankind, and argued 
a richt to act as the masters of the colonists. The whig 
fathers of the revolution, taking the ground of ^Satural La.v, 
asserted the natural freedom and equality of mankind. 
Nor could they take any other position against the British 
tyrants. They were forced to assert the first law of society — 
the self-evident truth that all men are created free and 
equal before God and in the eyes of just law. 

Understand, sirs, what it is that renders revolution 
necessary. Is it not " a long train of abuses *' on the part 
of the power that rules in the name of law? Is it not in 
consequence of the oppressive measures at war with society, 
forced upon the nation, and which must, if not resolutely 
resisted, result in the entire overthrow of the social state ? 

There never was a rebellion, says an ancient writer, 
unless tyranny was the cause of it. None but tyrants, 
robbers, and base men can deny the equal rights of man- 
kind, for only such can have hearts base enough to allow 
themselves to declare war against the constitutional law of 
society. Our fathers, who were forced to resist the tory 
power of Great Britain, had all the old whig works in 
their hands, — those grand and masterly productions which 
the greatest and best minds of England had delivered on 
the subject of human rights — works written against those 
innovating despots and tyrants, who were determined to 
turn society upside down, and establish absolute and per- 
petual slavery. 

They quoted John Lock who said, when battling against 
the infamous Filmer, " a state of equality wherein all the 
power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more 
than another ... is the natural state of mankind . . . there 
beincr nothing more evident than that creatures of the same 
species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same 
advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, 
should also be equal one amongst another without subordi- 
nation or subjection." In 177-i, the Hon. 3Ir. Wilson, of 
Pennsylvania, published his noble work in defence of the 
colonies, in which he declares, " all men are, by nature, 
equal and free," and that " no one has a right to any 

* See his Works on Law, «S:c., vol. 3, pp. 205, 20€. 



100 LETTERS TO 

authority over another without his consent."^ So De Witt 
Clinton, referring to the torj despotisms of the mother 
country, and the existence of slavery in the new world, 
asks :— " Have not prescription and precedent — patriarchal 
dominion — [which had been specially advocated by Filmer 
under the Stuarts, as well as the] divine right of kings and 
masters, been alternately called in to sanction the slavery 
of nations? And would not all the despotisms of the 
ancient and modern world have vanished into air, if the 
natural equality of mankind had been properly understood 
and practiced. . . . This declares that the same measure of 
justice ought to be measured out to all men, v^ ithout regard 
to adventitious inequalities, and the intellectual and phys- 
ical disparities which proceed from inexplicable causes.""^ 

Alexander Hamilton, in 1774, in defending the action of 
Congress of that year against the outrageous charges of an 
American tory, said to him, " the fundamental source of 
all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total 
ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you 
once to become acquainted with these, you could never 
entertain a thought, that all men are 7iot, by nature, entitled 
to equal privileges. You would be convinced that natural 
liberty is the gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole 
human race ; and that civil liberty is founded on thatj^^ 

But you, sirs, scout this great truth, and take sides with 
the impious tories of the revolution. 31ust not every 
thinking American of the present «y see, that to allow 
your school to control the nation, must inevitably result in 
its total ruin. If your doctrine subvert the fundamental 
law of all societies of men, how can American society en- 
dure under your crushing administration ? 

The law of human equality is written by the Almighty 
in the constitution of man. So said Hamilton, so said 
Franklin, so said Jay, so said Hancock, the Adamses, the 
noble Warren, and all the true whig patriots of the revolu- 
tion. But you deny this doctrine, and take sides with the 
enemies of America, against the fathers of the revolution. 
" The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for 
among old parchments or musty records," said Hamilton. 

* uSee liis Address, Dec. 24, 1797. 

t See Hamiltou's Works, vol. 2, p. 61. 



PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 101 

*' they are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole vol- 
ume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself; 
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. "^ 

The House of Burgesses of Virginia, so early as 1765, 
acknowledged this fundamental law, in asserting the rights 
of the colonies, and it was afterwards incorporated into her 
constitution as the prime basis of civil association and gov- 
ernment. Was that all mockery ? It was effected in 
opposition to tory influence. 

Pennsylvania, also, in 1765, " Resolved that the constitu- 
tion of government in that province was founded on the 
natural rights of mankind .... and therefore is and ought 
to be perfectly free." Massachusetts in the same year 
passed like resolutions, and indeed every other colony north 
of Virginia. So also the committees from the several 
colonial assemblies, which met in New York on the 19th 
October of that year, (1765,) recognized the same eternal 
fundamental " law of liberty and equality." 

Indeed, sirs, how can you escape the infamy which must 
attach to you from the fact that the doctrines you uphold, 
and the measures you urge are identical in spirit with those 
detestable princples and measures of the tories of our 
fathers' days. 

You claim that a part of mankind were born to be the 
slaves of a privileged class. You assert that you have a 
right to appropriate the hard earnings of unfortunate men 
to your own use. In other words, you, as the tories, claim 
the power of taxing certain classes of men without their 
consent, and without allowing them any honest representa- 
tion in your councils. This is toryism complete. " That 
personal freedom is the natural right of every man," said 
the immortal Warren, " and that property, or an exclusive 
right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his 
own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths that 
common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradic- 
tion. And no man, or body of men, can, without being 
guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the 
persons or acquisitions of any other man or body of men, 
unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from 
some compact between the parties^ in which it has been 



* See Hamilton's Work?, vol. 2, p. 80. 
9* 



102 LETTERS TO 

explicitly and freely granted." One hundred and nine 
days after Warren had uttered that declaration against 
slavery, he fell a noble martyr in its defence on Bunker 
Hill. Yet some of you boast that you will one day stand 
upon that spot with your slaves. 

It was a whig principle, adopted from the fundamental 
law of human rights, that " he who detains another by 
force in slavery, is always bound to prove his title." " The 
slave, or person claimed as a slave, must not be obliged to 
prove a negative, namely, that he never forfeited his lib- 
erty. But the violent possessor was bound to prove in all 
cases his title, against the original claims of the old pro- 
prietor — that is, the man himself. Each man is the origi- 
nal proprietor of his own liberty. The proof of his losing 
it is incumbent on the claimant."^^' " Without satisfaction 
given, permanent power assumed by force over the fortunes 
of others, must generally tend to the misery of the whole. 
.. . . . AVe must therefore conclude, that no endowments, 
natural or acquired, can give perfect right to assume power 
over others without their consent."! " All men," said the 
noble whig, Harrington, in the days of the Stuarts, " all 
men, naturally, are equal ; for though nature with a noble 
variety has made difi'erent features and lineaments of men, 
yet as to freedom, she has made every one alike, and given 
them the same desires."! 

The constitutional convention held in Ipswich, 29th 
April, 1778, declared that the benefi|s of government are 
greater or less, " according as government is more or less 
conformable to those principles of equal and impartial lib- 
erty which is the property of all men from their birth as 
the gift of the creation." " We are contending for free- 
dom," said these upright whig fathers ; " let us all be 
equally free. It is possible, it is just. Our interests 
[those of the blacks and whites] when candidly considered, 
are one. Let us have a constitution founded, not upon 
party prejudices — not one for to-daj", or tomorrow — but 
for posterity. Let Esto perpetua be its motto. If it be 



* Hutchinson's System of Moral Philosophy, Lond. 1755, vol. 2, B. 3, 
c. 3, sec. 6. See, also, " A short introduction to Moral Philusophy, in 
3 Books, by Francis Hutchinson, LL. D., vol. 2, book 3, ch. 3, sec. Q. 

t Ibid, B 2, c. 5 

I Harrington's Woiks, 3d ed., Lond. p. 11. 



PKO-SLAVERY MEN. 103 

founded in gnod policy, it will be founded in justice and 
honesty. Let equal justice be done to all the members of 
community ; and we thereby imitate our common father. 
All men are born equally free ; the rights they possess at 
their births are equal, and of the same kind. Some of 
these rights are alienable, others inalienable, and can have 
no equivalent The slave receives no equivalent. Com- 
mon equity is opposed to his condition. These rights are 
to be clearly defined in a bill of rights previous to the rat- 
ification of any constitution. ''=^ 

When the Massachusetts constitution was adopted in 
1780, as already hinted, the declaration that all men are 
born free and equal, was incorporated, " not merely," says 
Dr. Belknap, "as a moral or political truth, but with a par- 
ticular view to establish the liberation of the negroes on 
the general principle, and so it was understood by the 
people at large."! 

Thus was it recognized in Massachusetts on the adoption 
of her constitution that " Government de jure is a civil 
society of men, instituted and preserved upon the founda- 
tion of common right.'''X Harrington, who uttered the 
above, represents an illegitimate or bastard government, to 
be " an art whereby some few men, subject a city or 
nation, and rule it according to his or their private inter- 
ests^ Such a system was not to be permitted ; the people 
were bound to resist it, and overthrow it. And what other 
is your pretended government, but just this system of 
bastardy ; an oligarchy of slaveholders, which the Ameri- 
can people in the name of equal justice, and the rights of 
humanity, are bound to overthrow. There is not a free 
state constitution you have not trampled upon. 

The people are therefore bound to rout your whole 
force ; for " whatever alteration mankind may have made 
in regard to their original state, they cannot, without vio- 
lating their duty, break in upon that state of peace and 
society, in which nature has placed them, and which, by 
her laws, she has strongly recommended to their obser- 

* Keport of the committee of the Essex Co. Convent. Massachu- 
setts, 1778. 

t ]\h\ssachiisetts Hist. Coll., 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 203. 

j Harrington's Oceana, bee his Works, 3d Ed. 1767, p. 37. 

§ Ibid, pp. 517, 520. 



104 LETTERS TO 

vance."'^ In allowing you to carry out your pernicious 
principles, the people would be, subverting their own insti- 
tutions of freedom and justice, and submitting to be your 
slaves. 

I have already shown that your system of slavery is 
worse than that of the barbarians of Europe in the early 
periods of the Christian Era. Guizot says, " the principle 
that all men's lives are of equal worth in the eyes of the 
law, was established by the code of the Visigoths."! But 
your despotism denies this principle, and makes the life of 
those you hold as slaves, and of those who oppose slavery, 
of little more worth than the life of a dog. 

You traduce and villify those, who, like the true whigs 
of '76, are the firm friends of freedom, and the advocates 
of equal human rights. This is to be expected. But that 
you should be permitted to impose the most odious enact- 
ments upon the people in the name of law, in order to sup- 
port a system of oppression which is contrary to law, and 
justice, is a degradation to which the people of America 
cannot submit without overwhelming their own institutions 
with floods of corruption and disgrace. 

That " slavery is condemned by reason and the law of 
nature " has been decided even by the Supreme Court of 
Mississippi.! " Allegiance to that power which gives us 
the forms of men," said the eloquent Sheridan, commands 
us to maintain the rights of men ; and never yet was this 
truth dismissed from the human h^rt ; never, in any time, 
in any age ; never in any clime wnere rude man ever had 
any social feelings; never was this unextinguishable truth 
destroyed from the heart of man, placed as it is in the core 
and center of it by his Maker, that man was not made the 
property of man.^^\ 

The whigs of the American revolution, as already shown, 

* Burlamaqui, part 4, c. 1, § 4. 

t Guizot's riist. Europe, Civil, p. 81. Amer. ed., 1838. 

\ This declaration was given in 1818. See Walker's reports of cases 
&c., p. 42. Fletci er, the tory advocate of the South, a renegade North 
erner, says of this decision of the Mississippi court, it is " a false and sui 
cidal assertion, most unnecessarily and irrelevantly iiitroduced. See 
Fletc er's Le sons on Slavery, p. 392. 

^ Sheridan before the Mouse of Lords in 1787, in the trial of Sir War- 
ren Hastings. Baron de Wolf advances the same principle. See Ob 
servat. sur le Traite du Droit de la Nat. de m. 1763. 



PRO-SLATERY MEN. 105 

were opposed to slavery from the very nature of their 
principles, they based their political system on " Natural 
Law " — the " Higher Law " — the fundamental law of all 
legitimate society and government. I find this inculcated 
in hundreds of works published between ITGl and 1800, 
on the subject of government and human rights, great 
numbers of which directly attacked slavery. In short 
anti-slavery was the spirit of that period. Nor were there 
any who ventured to defend slavery in public. 

The distinct and emphatic manner in which the doctrine 
of ec(ual human rights was stated in its opposition to slav- 
ery, at that period, has already been shown. And here I 
may add the words of one of the leading whigs of Connecti- 
cut in that era : " That freedom is the sacred right of 
every man, whatever he his color ^ who has not forfeited it 
by some violation of municipal law, is a truth established 
by God himself in the very creation of human beings. No 

TIME, NO CIRCUMSTANCE, NO nUMAN POWER OR POLICY Can 

change the nature of this truth, nor repeal the fundamental 
laivs of society by ichich every mans right to liberty is 
guaranteed. The act therefore of enslaving men is always 
a violation of those great primary laws of society, by which 
alone the master himself holds every particle of liis own 
freedom."^ 

The same author speaking of the state of the public mind 
on the subject of slavery at that period says : — " The injus- 
tice of enslaving any part of the human race has been the 
subject of so much public discussion, and so generally ad- 
mitted by the inhabitants of Connecticut [he was at this 
time addressing them] that any attempt to prove it, would 
be a very ill compliment to the understanding of my fel- 
low-citizens. Nor could any efibrts of mine add novelty to 
the subject ; so numerous, elaborate and diffuse have been 
the essaj^s, and so powerful the eloquence employed in 
vindicating the violated rights of humanity, that language 
and rhetoric are exhausted."! 

Thus, it is seen by a cotemporary writer and one of the 
most learned men of New England, that in the year 1783, 

* See Effects of Slavery on Morals and Industry. By Noah Webster, 
17S3. 

t Ibid p. 5. 



106 LETTERS TO 

some four years after the adoption of the present Federal 
Constitution, the subject of slavery had been so thoroughly 
discussed, so openly denounced, and so generally admitted 
to be a gross yiolation of justice, the fundamental law of 
human society, that it had become quite common-place. 

From what I have shown, then, it is evident that slavery 
is whollv illeoral. It has always been illeo;al. It was con- 
trar}^ to law in Greece, in Rome, in all the nations of Europe 
duriuor the middle ases. It was abolished as illegal — as a 
monstrous sin — as at war with legitimate society and gov- 
ernment. Xegro slavery was set up by a corrupt papal 
power. It was sanctioned only by the despots of Europe 
in opposition to the law of civil society. It was introduced 
into the South, solely under the favor of tory despotism. 
The English law condemned it. Positive law could never 
be made to sanction it. It exists at the present moment 
in the South against law. The civil power of the Southern 
states — what civil power there is — has never been able to 
establish this infamous institution. 

This has been acknowledged by Senator Mason, of Vir- 
ginia. " If it be required" said he " that proof shall be 
brought, that slavery is established by existing laws, it is 
impossible to comply with the requisition, for no such 
proof can be produced, I apprehend, in any of the slave 
states. I am not aware that there is a single state in 
which the institution is established by positive law.'""^ 

Yet you pretend that slavery is sanctioned by the Feder- 
al Constitution. You say that our fathers in adopting that 
instrument, established slavery, and bound themselves and 
their children, and their children's children to support it. 
Infamous libel ! — Has it not been shown that that is not 
law, that is not just? That that cannot bind that does not 
justly oblige ? — that government, as ordained of God and 
instituted by the people, is for the protection of the abso- 
lute rights of human nature? — that, for government to at- 
tempt to establish slavery, is to abrogate itself, and to com- 
mit suicide ? 

Your theory then abolishes government, overthrows so- 
ciety, makes war upon the people, sets up despotism, crushes 

* See Mason's Speech in the U. S. Senate 19th Ang. 1850. 



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108 LETTERS TO 

Your theory makes civil power at war with human rights, 
whereas civil power is bound by the law of its existence to 
preserve human rights. That is not civil power that re- 
quires the rendition of an innocent man to slavery, but a 
power at war with civil government, at war with society, 
which mankind are bound to resist, as they are bound by 
the law of nature to preserve the rights of nature — the in- 
stitutions of society — the liberties of mankind. 

Your theory is at war with the fundamental laws of all 
the free states. Every pro-slavery advocate in the free 
states, as much commits treason against the states govern- 
ments of the North, by advocating his theory, as the silly 
Dr. Manwarring did against the government of England 
when he advocated the divine right of Charles I. to tax the 
English people without their consent. Every state — the 
people of every commonwealth, are bound to preserve their 
own constitution. There can be no legal power in the gen- 
eral government that can abrogate ihQ fundamental laws of 
the states. For it is only hy virtue of those fundamental 
laws that every state is a free commonwealth. 

The rights of human nature constitute the fundamental 
principle of every legitimate civil society. The people 
have no power — no right to abandon this law under any 
circumstances. They are bound to resist every invading 
power that comes in to destroy or to trample upon it. To 
allow of such invasion is infamous treachery to society. It 
is a degradation to which only degenerate men — beastly 
cowards, and traitors can be supposed willing to submit to. 
The only salvation for our free institutions is in the union of 
all the true sons of freedom on the fundamental law of so- 
ciety, and a manly and determined resistance to your infa- 
mous despotism. 



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